Halo: Agent Alpha
by Ariane-072
Summary: She works alone. As a highly secret 'Solo', Alpha's purpose is to eliminate rogue soldiers. Those who turn on their comrades, or who disappear and, when tracked, leave carnage in their wake. The most secretive part of her work is the rare but real threat of rogue Spartans. Suddenly, she finds herself working with another Solo, and things really get interesting.
1. Prologue: Enforcer

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: this is just the prologue, which is why it's so short. Chapters will be much longer. I don't own Halo, but I do own the characters in this story.**

The rogue was one step ahead of her.

Always one damn step ahead. The Solo frowned and kept walking, eyes flicking between sensor readouts and her surroundings. This rogue was organized, clearly of sound mind – if not intention – and familiar with the tactics and methods of the Solos dispatched to eliminate the few who were stupid enough, or insane enough, to go rogue.

Her bionic eye identified a potential threat, moving fast at ground level away from her. A moment's pause to consult the sensors in her suit, and suddenly she was off, racing through the undergrowth in hot pursuit. Her target had made his first mistake. She would make sure it was to be his last.


	2. Chapter 1: Solo

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was thrown together relatively quickly, and hasn't been proofread, so please excuse any errors in grammar or style. I welcome reviews, note Alpha's thoughts won't always be as professional as her outward demeanor!**

* * *

**14 APRIL 2527; 0830 HOURS / ON BOARD _UNSC SPIRE OF DARKNESS_, ORBITING CLASSIFIED PLANET OF CLASSIFIED SYSTEM**

She wore fatigues instead of her usual MJOLNIR. The dog tags around her neck were hidden inside her shirt in a very deliberate move not to give away her cover identity.

Alpha fingered the pistol at her hip almost lovingly, without breaking the rhythm her boots pounded out against the treadmill. She'd run four miles thus far, easily matching a normal human's sprinting speed, and the only sweat on her body was left over from the training she had done earlier that morning. It was satisfying for her to know she was faster, stronger, smarter than anyone else on this ship, and at absolute peak fitness.

Suddenly she glanced at the door, and dropped to normal human jogging speed moments before it slid open. Helljumpers. Three of them, shoving each other and laughing. One had a glob of oatmeal on the front of his shirt. The Solo thought that was sloppy, but she was alert and wary regardless.

Helljumpers didn't like Spartans. Alpha was, first and foremost, a Spartan, though none of the soldiers on this cruiser knew that. They knew she was young, and they knew she was a non-commissioned officer, and they knew she was damn capable, but they weren't smart enough to figure out that she wasn't just some other Marine.

"Look at her," the biggest Helljumper was saying, "armed on the treadmill. _Shit_, she paranoid or something?"

"Doesn't look paranoid," the one with the oatmeal on his shirt commented. "Doesn't look _anything_. Ever seen such a youngen so hardened? _Damn._"

Alpha would have sworn she heard respect in the sloppy one's voice. Good. With respect came a healthy level of fear, and if they feared her, they would leave her be. Suddenly she recognized the third Helljumper. _Shit._ The Solo controlled her expression carefully, but couldn't keep her shoulders from tensing.

"Sloppy," she said to herself, softer even than a whisper. "If John was here, he'd see it. Do better, Ay."

"I know her," Collins said quietly – trying not to let her hear. "That's a Spartan, lads, make no mistake."

Alpha went back to her previous running pace. No point in pretending now. She thanked her lucky stars Collins had no idea _which_ Spartan she was, only that she was one.

"She's the one beat the shit outta you, then?" Oatmeal Collar asked.

"Yea. Don't cross her, man, she's deadly. Temper as fiery as that hair of hers."

She stared at the distance counter, watching the numbers change and allowing herself a small smile of satisfaction at the impressive mile rate. Alpha did _not_ want to speak with these Helljumpers, or any Helljumpers for that matter. A few stray locks of hair slipped over her face, having worked their way free of the ponytail she had tied them back in.

"To hell with regulations," she muttered. If not for regulations, her hair would be a few centimeters longer. If it was just that little bit longer, it would stay in its customary ponytail.

"Shame she's one of _them_," the big one commented in a low voice he clearly meant Alpha not to hear. "She's pretty."

The Solo laughed at that, not breaking rhythm. "Me, pretty? Get your eyes checked. I'm only pretty if you're into scars."

All three Helljumpers did a double-take. It was kind of comical, the way they always did that when she opened her mouth and spoke. As if they thought she wasn't capable of speech, because she was a Spartan.

"You need a real mirror, pretty girl," Oatmeal Collar informed her, voice somewhere between mocking and lewd.

"Maybe I do," Alpha replied, keeping her voice carefully level as she got off the treadmill. "You need to forget what I look like. I'm not interested, and I'm starting to get annoyed."

Collins looked uneasy. "Leave off, boys, she don't need her gun to kill you. Lucky for you that she's packing, cuz guns're a lot quicker and less painless than getting beaten to death."

"I've learned since then, Collins," Alpha said smoothly. "Beating someone to death is so awfully barbaric. I prefer more elegant methods nowadays."

With that, she left, quite satisfied with the frantic way the Helljumpers stumbled for words. Unfortunately, word would get out, and she could do nothing about that. Had she been told Collins was aboard, she would have trained in her room in the barracks, rather than the communal gym. Her presence was supposed to be a secret.

Nevertheless, perhaps it was the perfect excuse to start wearing her Solo armor again. A smile crossed her face at the thought of once again spending most of her time encased in matte-black MJOLNIR. It was the first time, outside Solo Academy, that she had been offered the opportunity to use the exclusive, cutting-edge armor – mostly, she wore her other suit, the standard olive green that belonged in the domain of Spartan Teams. Solos were needed so rarely, all of them had covers that often felt more natural than their Solo identities.

* * *

**14 APRIL 2527; 1320 HOURS**

"Would you stand still, please?" Snap Frost asked her for the tenth time. "It is difficult to obtain a strong baseline reading when you insist on moving away from the instruments."

Alpha moved back into position and set her muscles so she wouldn't flinch. Frost was getting just annoying enough that she was determined this would be the last time. For the tenth time, the complex mess of robotic arms holding various instruments reached for her. The trouble with AIs, she decided, was that they had no idea how unnerving it was, even to a Spartan, to stand near-naked and have all these different readings taken by something completely mechanical. Oddly, it was not the nudity itself that bothered her, but the strong sense of vulnerability brought on by the lack of armor.

"Damn it, that's cold," she complained. Her body temperature – and therefore skin temperature – was lower than that of other Spartans, but despite that, or perhaps because of it, she had a strong dislike of anything colder than herself.

"I know," the AI said gleefully. "I could have warmed it up, but you're cute when you're annoyed."

"I'll show you cute," Alpha shot back. "Sooner or later, you won't know when, I'll yank you when you're not ready. How's that for cute?"

"Oh, not that, never that!" Frost responded in mock horror. Alpha grinned wickedly, despite the cold; she knew her AI partner well enough to know that the mocking was a thin veil for very real mortification at the idea.

"Got it?"

"Good consistent reading, yes. Hmm, interesting."

"What?"

"Upon comparison of the previous baselines I have obtained, I have discovered something fascinating. Your skin temperature has been consistently dropping since augmentation, and your core temperature has done the same. I was aware, of course, that your temperature would be lower than typical due to a particular augmentation, but did not expect such a maintained rate of decrease over such an extended period."

Alpha stepped away from the instruments and slithered back into her form-fitting bodysuit. "I was told to expect it and consider it normal. My core temperature and subsequently my skin temperature will drop slowly until around the time I turn twenty, at which point it should be around fifteen degrees Fahrenheit lower than average." She fought with the fastenings at the back of the bodysuit, contorting herself into a very uncomfortable position to fasten the last of them.

"Approach the square again, please. The machine will fit your armor more quickly than any engineering team. Time is of the essence – you are due for briefing in just ten minutes."

Alpha again stood, arms and legs spread, and locked her muscles into place. Somehow, the machine was less intimidating when it held pieces of armor. Her armor was assembled around her, and upon the last piece being put into place, the gel layer flashed hot, then cold, then matched her skin temperature. An arm extended towards her, holding her helmet, which she took and put on.

"You ready, Frost?"

"Yank me."

The Solo pulled the chip out of its slot and slid it into her helmet, wincing at the uncomfortable sensation as Snap Frost integrated himself into the suit's systems, and, subsequently, her mind. His presence was liquid ice in her brain, but thankfully that sensation never lasted long. It was so cold, it hurt. And then it faded away, and Alpha ran for the briefing room, one eye on the timer in her HUD.

_Can't be late, can't be late. Five minutes – damn, Mongooses are too slow, going to have to run._ The Solo increased her speed, rocketing along the corridors. Her boots were too noisy against the metal floor, at this speed, but silencing technology was still in the prototype phase. She would be issued it when it came to field testing, which, she expected, was likely to be sometime in the next three years. Engineering was not fast when it came to lab testing and refining new technology.

Alpha skidded sideways into a corner, and had to scramble for her balance as she sped out of it. The numbers on the timer moved incredibly fast, but incredibly slowly, all at once. Spartan Time, they called it, when Spartans' reflexes sped up under pressure, and their perception of time became skewed.

The team would laugh at her if they could see her now – she interrupted the thought, pushing all thought of her team back into the part of her mind that was Petty Officer First Class Ariane-072. She was Solo Agent Alpha, and if she thought at all about anything connected to her cover, that cover could become compromised.

At least, she told herself, she had her pistol at her hip. It wasn't loaded. She never kept it loaded; too dangerous. It didn't matter. The important thing was that she was armed, and her weapon bore the capital "A" that marked it as her own. She had engraved that letter herself, in her exacting way, on every one of her weapons. From pistol to sniper rifle, and even her combat knife. All of them were balanced and modified specifically for her. The letter gave away nothing, to either Solos or Teamers, because it applied to both her identities.

She slowed to a steady jog, within sight of the door she wanted and with nearly a whole minute to spare on the timer. Ten feet from the door, she dropped to a walk, and then paused as she waited for it to slide open.

Alpha stepped through, and snapped a smart salute. "Sir!"

"At ease. I was beginning to wonder if you would be here on time, Solo."

"Apologies, sir, I was held up. However, I am here, I was punctual, and I am ready for more specific orders."

"Then sit, and let us begin… I am sure you are aware that your target is no ordinary rogue."

She sat, exact and attentive. "I am, sir."

"Good. Your task is to locate your target, inside the facility, and eliminate him. On the surface, this is a very standard Solo mission. You must treat it as such until you have eyes on the target. However, he has stolen the only copy of some very important, very sensitive data. You are to retrieve that data, undamaged, from his body. I expect you will be able to eliminate your target in a way which does not endanger the data."

"Yes, sir." Alpha made note of the order, and the specific emphasis on ensuring it was undamaged. She pulled up the MISSION NOTES screen in her HUD, and added each specific point to the notes Frost had already made.

"Your target is SPARTAN-024, a soldier you know as Joey, and a sad loss for the UNSC and ONI alike. His status was changed to MIA hours after he disappeared with the data, a change made by SPARTAN-084. You need not concern yourself with that task. You will leave at oh-six-hundred tomorrow via Pelican. I have sent further information to Snap Frost; he will bring you up to speed during the journey."

The name and number appeared in her HUD, accompanied by a note from Frost to remind her not to bother with changing Joey's status. Alpha nodded firmly. "Yes, sir."

"Do you understand your mission?"

"I understand."

"Good. You are dismissed."

"Yes, sir," she said as she stood and left. _Damn. Joey. He always was incredibly capable. Killing him won't be easy._

"You know," Frost said, guessing at her thoughts, "you would not have been assigned to this mission if they did not think you capable of completing it."

"Yes, I know that. I have never pitted my skills against a fellow Spartan with any intention of killing him, and though I have won nearly every time, I worry that in a life-or-death situation, we are far stronger. I worry that all my specialist training may not be enough." Alpha walked without particularly caring where she was going, though, as ever, her stride was purposeful and precise.

"You've not eaten since breakfast," Frost reminded her. "Perhaps the mess hall?"

"Good idea," she agreed, suddenly ravenous. "I'll need all my reserves of strength to take down this rogue. I have no idea whether I will have the time, or sufficient cover, to eat after we've been dropped."

"That, I suppose, is what stimpacks and nutrient injections are for, as much as I dislike allowing you to use them."

"_Allowing_ me? I am perfectly capable of injecting myself, Frost."

"Hm, I suppose that is true. It doesn't matter. While you eat, I will analyze this data and isolate relevant points. It will save you having to learn every single detail, whether it has any value to the mission or not."


	3. Chapter 2: Rogue

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm still learning this site so please excuse any formatting errors. Chapter two here, in which Alpha earns her stripes, and Charlie makes himself known.**

* * *

**14 APRIL 2527; 0545 HOURS / HANGAR BAY OF ****_UNSC SPIRE OF DARKNESS_****, WAITING TO BOARD PELICAN DROPSHIP L-232**

Alpha stood by a wall, patiently watching as the Pelican was loaded with equipment she would not use. Weapons, primarily; she already carried the two she planned on using, her modified sniper rifle and an assault rifle without a name which had been made for her specifically for Solo work. Not, she thought, to forget the combat knife sheathed along her left forearm.

Specially designed ammunition compartments in her armor were empty, because HighCom and ONI wanted to dictate the types of ammunition she could use on this mission. No armor-piercing, no incendiary, no high-explosive rounds. She could have standard ammunition, nothing else. The quartermaster had explained, apologetically, that though she could collect her weapons, she had been barred from collecting ammunition. Alpha didn't care. She had never been one to rely on special bullets anyway.

All in all, she cut a lethal figure, despite the marked lack of anything explosive upon her person. No grenades for this one, either. She had no idea what they expected her to do if her target had locked the doors, though she knew precisely what she _would_ do. She would utilize Frost's hacking talents and have him disable the locks. If the doors were stuck for some reason, she would either have to find another way through, or bash them down. The first option was preferable, because it involved less damage to her armor.

It did not escape her notice that the Marines loading the Pelican gave her a wide berth, and shot uneasy glances at her every so often. The matte black armor, and the Solo insignia of white DMRs crossed in front of a shock of bright red spatter that represented – and resembled – blood, tended to do that to people.

A Helljumper sauntered over. Alpha made no move to acknowledge her presence, until the muscular woman spoke. "Going in alone, eh? Can't say I'd do the same, but I'm no Spartan. If that's even what you are, I mean, you look like some kind of enforcer or something."

"I'm a Spartan," Alpha confirmed.

"That explains everything," the Helljumper said with a laugh. "I've seen you guys in action. One, he was standing there shooting one second, and then the next, he's three feet away and there's a plasma burn on the wall behind where he was. It was incredible. Even as fast as you are, he'd have been moving before the plasma left the barrel."

"Really?" Alpha faked surprise.

"Really. I'd say the same thing under oath, if it ever came up."

The Solo shrugged and moved to inspect the Pelican. If it wasn't loaded properly, she would unpack it and re-pack it herself, and it would be easier to do that if she didn't leave the Marines to work until they were done. Some of the younger Marines took a step or two backwards as she approached, faces a mixture of awe and terror.

"Easy there, lads," the sergeant barked. "Spartan – the Pelican is not ready to board."

"I know," Alpha told him, looking inside. All the supplies were packed tight, all the weapons secured correctly. "Good. Carry on."

As she turned to walk back to the wall, the sergeant stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She could easily have shaken it off, but she turned her attention back to the Marine.

"Spartan. My men have been given specific orders to ensure they load the Pelican properly. They are well aware that there will be consequences for sloppy work."

"I was not aware of any such order. I am satisfied with what I have seen." The Solo smiled to herself. "If I did not know better, I would think this work had been done by a Spartan. Impressive." The clock in her HUD ticked over to 0600 just as the Marines stepped away from the Pelican, hands spread to indicate they were finished.

"You may board. The Pelican will depart once final systems checks have been completed."

"Thank you, Sergeant." Alpha climbed into the back of the dropship and sat in the only empty seat, near the back. She assumed that was to allow for a quick exit. _Excellent. I might find this arrangement useful later._

She checked the nearest ammo box, and smiled. She was lucky; this box was filled with sniper rounds. High-velocity armor-piercing rounds would have been better, since they were the sort of thing that would take the head off an Elite with one shot, beyond visual range, but standard rounds were nothing to sneeze at either. It would do. She filled a couple of ammunition compartments and loaded the sniper rifle, and then got up and went over to a box labeled not with UNSC letters and numbers, but 'Alpha'. From that, she took enough rounds for her assault rifle to fill the rest of her storage compartments, and then another magazine with which she loaded the assault rifle.

"I don't know how you expect to carry any food," Frost said.

"I don't. Any space taken up by food is space that could be used for ammunition. I don't expect to need all this, but the last thing I want is to run out of ammo halfway through the mission." Alpha clipped an extra hardcase to her left thigh and filled it with stimpacks and nutrient injections. "These will work just as well, and take up far less room. There should be some biofoam and medigel around here somewhere…"

"In the case directly to your left, eye level. Where do you intend to store _that_?"

"This suit has automatic injectors, Frost, you know that. If I have a sufficient supply of each… ah, here they are, good." She slotted two cans each of biofoam and medigel into their respective places in her suit. "I'm sure that HighCom will have techies working to streamline the system. There are rumors that they intend to make this standard issue eventually. It'll take years before the system's efficient enough for that."

"It's bulky," Frost complained.

"I know. But if I were to lose consciousness, the suit could administer first aid. Failing that, you could manually activate the system. The standard system doesn't work so great for Solos. No team to administer the foam and gel. I'll take bulky over dead any day."

"The bulk might restrict your movement, making you easier to hit. You could take a lot more damage."

"Yes, Frost, but nobody can expect not to take at least a few hits. If I'm lucky, they'll be minor. Flesh wounds. If I'm _un_lucky, they'll be more serious, and without immediate first aid, I could bleed out. Granted, most injuries I could treat myself, but what about head wounds? What if a bullet grazed my head and knocked me out before I had a chance to heal other hits?" Alpha worked while she talked, finding supplies and then finding places to put them. Right when Frost thought she couldn't possibly carry any more, she found another way to increase the amount of storage she had available.

"Only a Solo could possibly carry such a ridiculous amount of supplies," the AI commented.

"That should do it, I think. Weapons, ammunition, stimpacks, nutrient injections, first aid, comms equipment, mini-welder, wrench, soldering iron, and cable splicer. Excellent."

"I don't think anybody else could fix just about anything with nothing more than a welder, a wrench, a soldering iron and a splicer."

"Other Solos, Frost. Perhaps some of the more engineering-minded Teamers."

The Pelican's floor shifted under Alpha's boots; they were taking off. The back hatch closed and the cabin pressurized. She went back to her seat and sat in it, strapping herself in even though the straps could not possibly hold a half-ton of Spartan and armor in the event of a crash.

"I have uploaded a map of the facility and its surroundings to your TACMAP screen," Frost told her. "The target is somewhere within the main building, as best anybody can determine, and seems to have found the most tactically valuable position. He maintains it day and night; goodness knows how, he should have run out of stimpacks by now. There are no supplies inside the facility. No personnel. It has been abandoned for four years."

"Not so abandoned now," Alpha mused. "So. Somehow, we have to flank him. He's armed?"

"Yes, with a sniper rifle and an MA5K. Armor-piercing and High-ex rounds respectively. All stolen from the armory of the facility from which he escaped. He is holed up in a room with one entrance."

"_Wonderful_. Confronting Joey in a place he can't be flanked. I assume they got their data from his neural interface?"

"They did. From altitude and co-ordinates, they determined the room he is in. He is alive, he is not sleeping. Brainwaves are consistent with Joey's combat baseline. Adrenaline levels are elevated."

"Sounds like I'm going to have to be faster than him. I'll set myself up in the adjoining room, and get you to open the door remotely. What's the cover like?"

"Not great. There's a filing cabinet in there that you could turn on its side, but it won't do anything to stop a bullet. Might make it harder for him to aim, but that's it."

"I'm going to have to not be seen, then. Is the facility still powered?"

"Yes. It is likely to be well-lit, whether you go in under cover of darkness or not. The facility was never connected to the grid, and the generators were neither removed nor disabled when it was abandoned."

"Knowing Joey, the first thing he would have done would be to restore the power supply, even if the generators were switched off by the facility's previous occupants," Alpha agreed. "That makes things harder for me, though, because I need deep shadows. When they eventually reverse-engineer Covenant stealth technology, I will be a very happy Solo."

"And I will be a very happy AI, because you won't bother me with your planning as much." Frost's words were disgruntled, but his tone was playful. "I don't know why you do it. You always go your own way anyway."

"It's called thinking out loud. I have a plan. It's risky, but…"

"…it's the most likely to work out of everything you've thought of. Yes. I know." Frost sighed. "I wish I didn't have to hear it. You know every risk you take puts me in danger as well."

"I know, Frost, and if there was any other way, I would take it. But if we can't flank him, can't snipe him through a window, and can't go for a headshot even if we could, then I will have to take him on directly. I'll need your help to aim, and then once I've got a solid aim on his heart, I'll need you to open the door for me. I'm going to have to get my shot off before Joey can defend himself, and it's going to have to hit. No second chances."

"Sniper rifle, then?"

"Of course. The assault rifle would take too many rounds to kill him, and he could get a shot off in the meantime."

"Do you have a plan B?"

Alpha laughed at that. "Snap Frost, I _always_ have a plan B. Which I will explain, as ever, if we need it. Do you think it would be possible to draw him out somehow? Don't answer that. It won't be. Joey's brilliant, he'll know that his best bet will be to wait for me to come to him. He's safer where he is than he would be if he put himself in a situation where it would be possible for someone to flank him."

"There's an EMP generator in here. If I opened the door and you threw it in, you might disable his suit's systems long enough to take him out."

"That won't work. Spartans are trained to handle situations like that. Any of us can shoot without targeters, from the shoulder or from the hip, with accuracy almost as good as it is with the targeting system working at optimal capability. EMPs won't freeze up our armor completely. It would work if I was fighting Elites – take down the energy shields, allowing me to kill more quickly. But Joey's a Spartan, and we haven't reverse-engineered Covenant shield technology yet."

"Fair enough. I doubt there is anything I could say to discourage you from the plan you have formulated, so I shall hope your Spartan luck holds out." Frost sounded less than confident.

"Entering atmosphere in five," the pilot said over the onboard intercom. Alpha braced for the familiar jolt. One of the straps snapped anyway.

"Damn," she muttered. "Hope they don't count that when they count the cost of this mission. Not that there's much chance of my hope coming to anything. ONI have always been tight, and they aren't about to stop now."

"I'll modify the logs once we've dropped so that they think the strap was broken before this mission," Frost offered. "What ONI doesn't know, won't hurt them."

Alpha smiled at that, shoulder shaking in silent laughter. "Thanks, but no thanks. I don't much fancy arguing with an ONI-based AI again."

"That was not my fault," the AI protested.

"Suuuuure it wasn't."

Frost ignored her, and they lapsed into silence, riding out the usual turbulence without so much as a grunt or a squeak of surprise, even when the Pelican dropped ten feet, the last few straps of the harness snapped, and Alpha nearly hit the roof.

"Easy there, girl," the pilot said. Alpha fought back a snort of laughter; clearly the pilot was leaning on the intercom button accidentally as she talked to her bird.

"It'd be chaos back here if it wasn't just us," Alpha said to Frost. "Marines, Helljumpers, other Spartans, they'd all be asking what the hell that was about."

"Sorry about that," the pilot said, as if she had heard. "Hit a downdraft. Air currents around here are squirrely at the best of times."

"It's fine. I _might_ have been strapped in, and the straps _might_ have decided they couldn't hold a Spartan in her seat..." Alpha broke off, trying not to laugh.

"Dear God," the pilot said. "Not again. Only just had those straps replaced because I had one of you on board, and he'd strapped himself in, and we got blasted sideways by an unexpected crosswind. Bout the same place as the downdraft, too."

"Here?" That came as a surprise.

"Yeah. Big guy, strong Reach accent, matte black armor just like yours. Same insignia. Last I heard from him was a call for urgent evac, but he never arrived. No idea what happened to him – cause Spartans don't die, right?"

"So," Alpha said privately to Frost, "they sent someone else, and whoever it was, Joey killed him. Reach accent – that has to have been Bravo. Damn. I liked Bravo."

"Alpha is better than… whoever _that_ was," Frost said through the intercom. Alpha knew him well enough to hear the concern behind the confident assertion. He was worried. Bravo was a very skilled Solo, and if _he_ wasn't enough… "We will return."

"You can count on it," Alpha added. _Get over it, Frost, you'll put me off my game._

"I hope so. I'd hate to lose another of you guys out there. And ONI got on my ass about the AI, which I couldn't have retrieved even if I'd known where to look for it."

"ONI gets on everybody's ass about everything," Alpha said. "It's their job."

The pilot laughed. "That's true. All right, approaching LZ. You ready?"

"Put us down." Alpha stood and waited for the rear hatch to open. When it did, she watched the thick forest pass below her. Soon, the Pelican was all but skimming the trees, and then suddenly the trees gave way to a flat, grassy field, and the Pelican stopped moving forward and started its vertical descent.

"Good luck out there, Spartan," the pilot said. Alpha jumped out, assault rifle in hand, and sprinted for the cover of the forest.

"Roger that. We're Oscar Mike, status green. Alpha out."

Frost posted a nav marker in her HUD. Alpha calculated the time it would take to cover the distance at a fast march at roughly seven hours. She settled into rhythm, assault rifle leveled, and let herself focus on her surroundings. This kind of running was almost meditative to her; she could lose herself entirely in the rhythm and her ever-changing surroundings. It was the closest thing to sleep she could ever manage in a combat zone.

"Going hot," she said. "Safety off. Confirm no friendlies in the area."

Frost paused a beat. "Confirmed. Your suit's sensors indicate no contacts within range."

"Commencing radio silence." Alpha smirked. Radio silence would not affect her on this mission regardless. Frost didn't count because she didn't need comms to speak with him.

"Pointless thing to mention," Frost commented, "considering you wouldn't be using comm channels anyway."

"It's procedure, Frost."

Alpha tuned out to the sounds within her helmet and watched her surroundings pass her by. Vigilance would serve her well, and with the forest so thick she couldn't zone out completely, else she would run into a tree. She ducked through a narrow gap barely wide enough for her armored shoulders, then leapt over a fallen tree, and skirted around a boulder.

She was quite glad she was working alone. Other Spartans might have been able to keep up, but she would have been greatly slowed down by Marines or Helljumpers. The going was so tough that ordinary humans would have had to move at a slow march, and indeed so tough that Alpha had to revise her estimates. Seven hours was simply unrealistic. It would be closer to ten.

* * *

**14 APRIL 2527; 1715 HOURS / ABANDONED UNSC TRAINING FACILITY, CLASSIFIED PLANET OF CLASSIFIED SYSTEM**

"We rest here for a while," Alpha said, "and then we're going in. Hit me with a nutrient pack, would you? I'm hungry."

"If I must," Frost replied. The familiar sting came in the crook of her elbow, and a few minutes later, the gnawing in the pit of her stomach vanished. Alpha was, uncharacteristically, out of breath, and her muscles burned.

_Damn, that was tough._ "What a run! They should incorporate some terrain like this into the facility on Reach. I don't mind which facility. I'd like to train over difficult terrain more often."

"If this is your definition of difficult, I'd hate to see your definition of hellish."

Frost was right. Difficult was a log here, a cliff there, trees to get around, and the odd rockslide to scramble up. Difficult was a piece of cake. This was not quite hellish, though; hellish was swampland that sucked at the boots and was difficult to slosh through in the _easy_ parts, with vines, raised roots, and branches to contend with for the rest of it. In short, hellish was anything that actually physically slowed a Spartan down to the point where they would struggle in a combat situation. That, or lacked any type of cover, like a desert or a wide open plain. On the whole, Spartans avoided that kind of terrain.

"Hard to believe this place has only been abandoned for four years," Alpha mused, looking at the crumbling outer wall. "Looks stronger inside. Shame, that. I could bash a hole in this outer wall if I had to."

"You could," Frost agreed. "The inner walls are barely decayed at all, so although I have no doubt you _could_ get through them without explosives, it would take a lot of time and make a lot of noise."

"Ultimately defeating any effort to flank the target, because by the time I got through, he would have his weapon trained on me."

"Exactly."

Alpha re-checked her assault rifle to mask her surprise. "Now you agree with me."

"I had hoped that the forest might have reclaimed some more of this facility. I only have the schematics from when the place was operational. I see now that projections were inaccurate."

"So what was this place, anyway?" It was an irrelevant piece of data, but Alpha wanted to know anyway.

"It used to be a training facility. The UNSC used it to train Marines and Helljumpers, up until roughly four years ago when the facility the target disappeared from was completed. This facility was superseded, so it was left for the forest to reclaim."

Alpha nodded and committed the information to memory. "All right. Find me the nearest intact staircase or working elevator. Preferably one that will take me to the floor the target is on."

"Roughly thirty meters from the main entrance is a janitorial corridor. I will mark the entrance in your HUD. If you follow it, it will commence an upward slope. Along its length, there are doors. You are to ignore them and follow the corridor to the end. You will find yourself on the top floor, where your target is. I will help guide you to him."

"Let's go then. Keep watch for traps. I don't want to step on a trip mine, I don't want to get close to a trip mine at all, so if I don't see it, I need you to warn me about it." Alpha took a deep breath and marched towards the large glass sliding door. It remained shut. She leveled her rifle at it.

"Don't bother. That's completely bulletproof. Give me a second. Ah – got it."

The door slid open. Alpha stepped through and swept the room with her rifle. Her target might have been on the top floor, but all the intelligence she had on this mission was based on data from his neural ace, or from what was known to have been stolen. For all she knew, he could have corrupted other soldiers. Not other Spartans, but perhaps Marines.

"Clear," she announced, and trotted towards the nav marker. As she approached, what she had initially thought to be a wall panel slid aside to reveal a corridor. It was very dark inside, every single light smashed. Alpha activated her night vision, and shut her eyes for the instant she knew her vision would otherwise flash bright green. That first moment was always blinding.

She came to a left-hand bend and paused, back to the wall on the left, before stepping out with her rifle aimed down the connecting corridor. It was clear, as expected, but it paid to be vigilant. She set off once more, her pace even, deliberately slow enough to minimize the noise her boots made against the floor.

"Watch it," Frost said. "Motion sensor. Let me disable it."

"Go right ahead." Alpha stopped in her tracks and waited.

"Got it. Let's keep moving."

The Solo said nothing, but once again picked up the same steady jog. A panel slid open to her left, and she glanced through the gap to make sure there were no contacts inside. Her motion tracker was clean, but its range was nothing special, and it was not difficult to move little enough, or slowly enough, to avoid detection. All her specialist training had opened her eyes to her own weaknesses as well as giving her strategies with which she could take down rogues.

"I will tell you if there are any contacts, Alpha," Frost told her. "Just keep moving. The sooner this is over, the better."

"Amen," Alpha agreed, "but sensors are easy to fool. Eyes, not so much. Constant vigilance, Frost, nothing less."

Solo and AI lapsed into silence once more. Alpha felt the gradient of the floor change to a mild upward slope. Just enough, she suspected, to go up one floor each time she circled the building. That meant a lot of running before she could get eyes on the target. This was the boring part of the mission. It couldn't all be challenging.

More panels slid open, and each time, Alpha glanced through the opening as she trotted past, body half-turned and ready to explode into the room preceded by a hail of lead. Each time, there was nothing there. It was almost disappointing, but because it was an entirely expected result, Alpha ignored the small but growing bead of hope that she might get to engage a contact before she set herself up to take out her target.

"Trip mine up ahead," she said to Frost, before letting off a controlled burst of three rounds into the mine. It exploded, briefly filling the corridor ahead with flames. As they dissipated, Alpha ran through the space where they had been, reloading as she went. Twenty-nine out of thirty-two rounds, in a weapon that could empty a clip in a matter of less than ten seconds, could mean the difference between life and death. Enemy dead _before_ reload, or Solo dead because she had to reload in the middle of combat.

"Slow up a little now," Frost told her. "You're almost at the end of the tunnel."

Alpha dropped out of her slow jog. Each stride as she walked was cautious and deliberate, and she slid into a slight crouch, leaning forward into her rifle, which was still at her shoulder. As she moved, she watched the panel directly in front of her, above which Frost had just placed a nav marker. It slid open, and in the same moment Alpha hit the deck, commando-crawling forward beneath a long gout of flame.

"Classic Joey," she said. "Flamethrower traps always were his favorite."

"How'd you know that was coming?" Frost asked her.

"I didn't. Spartan-sense, remember?" Alpha cleared the flamethrower as she spoke, and was back on her feet in a flash. "All right, where to from here?"

"Follow the nav marker. I'll place another when you reach it."

The Solo trotted off across the room, and the marked door slid open as she approached. The nav marker moved another twenty-three meters away. "Roughly how much farther?"

"As the Pelican flies, he's right in the next room. We have forty meters to go before the door that will allow us onto the most direct route to the target. Forty meters, one door I will have to unlock for you, and several rooms with no doors at all," Frost informed her. A large amount of the information was completely irrelevant, but that was Frost, always sharing whatever snippet of data crossed his 'mind' in the moment.

Alpha paused at every doorway and swept each room with her rifle before continuing on. She approached the locked door above which Frost had placed the nav marker, and stopped in front of it. Frost said something vague which she paid no attention to. The Solo placed her left hand against the door. It was vibrating lightly, the way all working doors did. The vibration was not enough for an ordinary human to notice, and so subtle, in fact, that Alpha's sharp eyes caught no hint of it, but her sense of touch was so advanced that, even through the MJOLNIR gauntlet, she could feel it.

The lights on the door went green and it slid open with a cheerful ringing tone. Alpha wished for the hundredth time that doors would open silently, and trotted towards the new nav point, which was through another empty doorway and above an unlocked door.

As she warily approached the unlocked door, it too chimed, and then exploded with such force that Alpha was thrown backwards into the opposite wall. The impact hurt, and she was dazed just long enough to slide to the floor. The Solo leapt back to her feet, coughed once, and then grimaced at the fine red spray across her visor.

The sting of biofoam spread through her abdomen, but she ignored the pain and trotted through the mangled door.

"That's the one," Frost said when she glanced to her right to see another door, also unlocked. "Scanning… it's clean."

"Joey wouldn't trap that door with explosives. It's too close to him, and he would be injured in the blast as well. Ugh. Hydraulic shock, I think." Alpha moved with her shoulders curled forwards, the poor posture because it was the least painful way for her to hold herself. She walked in a straight line until she was in line with the closed door, then turned towards it, and forced herself to walk backwards a few strides. That was pure agony. She coughed again, and the spray of blood was thicker this time. "Mark me a target. Where's his heart?"

A little crosshairs appeared in her HUD. She switched to her sniper rifle and watched as her weapons monitor in her HUD blinked out, and then came back up, showing the rifle. Alpha dropped to a crouch and lined up the targeter with the crosshairs Frost had marked.

"Hit the door."

It opened, and Alpha squeezed the trigger. An almighty _crack_ sounded, too loud for just one rifle, and her vision in her left eye went black. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Her body tipped backwards from both the impact and the recoil from her own rifle, and she watched as, painfully slow, Joey's body crumpled and his rifle clattered to the floor.

Next moment, she was flat on her back, and her head felt like it had been split open. She tried to sit up, and couldn't, so she rolled over and dragged herself towards her target's body on her elbows.

"No, Alpha, you need to get to the roof," Frost told her. "Evac is on the way."

"The data," she choked out, then coughed again, spitting a big glob of blood. There was not far to go now. Her right eye locked determinedly onto Joey's body, her left still completely blind, Alpha forced the pain aside. She still had one very important objective.

Something stung the crook of her elbow. Moments later, she felt stronger.

"Wha-?" she started to ask.

"Stimpack. The chemicals are all that's keeping you conscious. Get the data, then get to the roof. NOW." Frost's voice was urgent. Alpha thought for a moment it was even panicked, but AIs didn't panic, so she dismissed the thought. She couldn't turn Joey's body over – he was flat on his back the same way she had been – but she reached behind his head, and her fingers found the slot in his helmet where the data chip was. She pulled it out, and slotted it into her own helmet.

Another sting told her that Frost had injected her with something else.

"On your feet."

Numb, the Solo did as she was told. She followed a nav point up onto the roof, and Frost opened a comm channel to Lima-232 for her. Alpha coughed. "Lima two-three-two, this is Solo Agent Alpha requesting immediate dustoff at el-zee Bravo. Over."

"This is Lima two-three-two, roger that. What's your status, over?"

"Mission complete. Agent status orange." She coughed again. "You might need heavy lift gear. Over."

"On my way. Lima two-three-two, out."

Frost was yelling something frantic, but his words were too fast for Alpha to understand. She stood, swaying, and watched the sky with her right eye. Her left _still_ gave her nothing, other than horrible pain. The Pelican came into view and set itself up where she could walk to it and step straight on. She lifted her left foot to walk forwards, and then the world went black. She barely felt the impact with the roof.

The big Spartan waiting in the Pelican watched her fall. He was fully six inches taller than average, for a Spartan, and solid. His HUD displayed Alpha's vitals in a small window by his motion tracker. As the Marines either side of him panicked, he calmly stepped off the Pelican and lifted the stricken Solo over his shoulder.

He, too, was clad in the matte-black MJOLNIR only Solos were allowed to wear, and he, too, had the crossed-DMRs-and-blood-spatter insignia. Solo Agent Charlie set his comrade down in one of the chairs and strapped her in so she would stay upright, then stood back to examine her mangled armor. Fully a quarter of her helmet was simply _gone_, and through the gap he could see that every blood vessel in her left eye had burst from the impact, evidently of a sniper round. She would lose that eye.

Of more concern was her drastically lowered blood pressure and racing pulse. She was suffering from severe internal bleeding. Probably, Charlie thought, from hydraulic shock, considering the blast damage on the front of her armor.

"Snap Frost," he said, "I want to know what happened. Every single detail."


	4. Chapter 3: Cover

A**UTHOR'S NOTE: fluff chapter, YAY. Not. Much more Charlie than Alpha in this one, sorry!**

* * *

**14 APRIL 2527; 2120 HOURS / ON BOARD ****_UNSC SPIRE OF DARKNESS_****, EN ROUTE TO EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM**

It was frustrating, Charlie thought, that he was being told absolutely nothing. Alpha's ill-fated mission was highly classified, and he understood that he could not know details, but Medical could _at least_ let him know if she was still alive.

Granted, he could have Liara hack the system and get him a copy of Alpha's file, but that was more information than he wanted. Similarly, he could probably march in, ignore Security's efforts to make him leave, and see for himself. But that would only work if HighCom hadn't assigned Teamers to the security squad, and he had a sneaking suspicion they might have.

"Step up to the machine, Charlie," Liara told him. "We need to get that armor off you before the team sees you and asks awkward questions."

The big Solo did as he was told. It must have cost a fortune, he thought, to fit him out. He was bigger than any other Spartan, which meant more materials and specially modified armor designs, _plus_ he had two MJOLNIR suits, which automatically doubled the cost. If a single Teamer cost more than a slipspace drive…

"Focus, Charlie. Where does your mind keep wandering off to?"

"Everywhere," he admitted. "Alpha, and then when I try not to think about that problem, anything and everything else. Are we just switching armor?"

"No, I need to check your baselines again. You keep fluctuating." Liara would never admit how much that bothered her, so Charlie didn't ask for her thoughts on the matter. He just shrugged.

"ONI said I could expect some odd readings. I know other Solos are consistently dropping – heart rate, core temperature, et cetera – and I'm a bit here, there and everywhere, which is not exactly what they meant when they told me that, but…"

"I know. The augmentations affect every Solo differently. No, what concerns me is that your heart rate spiked to a level that would have been high for a Teamer, for no apparent reason, during the mission. I need to monitor the rhythm."

Charlie frowned. "That wouldn't have been when Alpha collapsed, by any chance? I would have expected that to be a normal reaction."

"That as well… but when we were on the Pelican on the way back to the _Darkness_, it spiked again. You cannot possibly tell me you did not notice?"

He smiled ruefully. "I did. I also noticed a significant rise in the adrenaline levels in my blood. Considering this is the first time it has happened, I think we can write it off as a result of the stress of the mission."

"Humor me, Charlie, please," Liara said, her holographic form appearing above the projector. She looked uncharacteristically vulnerable. Charlie watched her with his head tilted to one side, and then filed the information away for later reference. He stripped off his bodysuit and then stepped back into the square, grimacing when the cold instruments touched his skin.

"Why do you _never_ warm those up?" he complained. "You know I hate the cold."

"Because you need to toughen up. If you are not careful, your cover will be blown. The team will begin asking awkward questions which, no doubt, you will stumble over, and I will be forced to rescue you _again_. Hold still, please."

Charlie locked his muscles. An instant later, he felt the familiar, unwelcome sting as the machine drew his blood for analysis. "You know, none of the other AIs insist on blood tests every time they take baselines."

"None of the other AIs have partners who have such unusual readings so often. Interesting – you were right, your adrenaline levels are still increased. White cell count is elevated. Scanning. No explanation found. Cholesterol is a little high. You need to watch what you eat, Charlie, no more bacon and eggs for breakfast."

"Oh _come on_, you know I burn it off!" Charlie wasn't sure if that last comment was one of Liara's friendly taunts, or whether she was actually serious. He decided to treat it like a joke.

"Be serious, Charlie. Slightly lowered red cell count, abnormal levels of lactic acid, oxygen levels on the low side of normal. You've done nothing unusual today, I don't think you even _trained_…"

"I didn't," Charlie said, controlling his voice so the alarm would not show.

"This is strange," Liara said. "I don't know what – oh! Alarming levels of Medigel indicator chemicals, indicating your body is not processing chemicals properly. The last time you used Medigel was late last month. All the indicators should be out of your system."

"That's from whatever the hell it was the Covie bastards did to me between when they knocked me out and when the team rescued me, I'd bet. There's a _reason_ I'm not a combat soldier at the moment." Charlie glanced down at the still-healing plasma burns on his chest, and, moving as little as possible, he ran a finger along the long thin scar that could only have come from a Covenant energy sword. "Team's coming, are you done?"

"For now."

Charlie struggled back into the slightly-too-small bodysuit and grabbed his dog tags from the locker marked TRIP-023, fastening them around his neck as he walked back to the square. "One of these days they'll have to make me a new skinsuit. This one's just about to give up."

"It's not their fault you've built up since they made it," Liara told him. "I think you actually might be taller, as well. Hold still."

He did. Little laser points appeared on his chest, and then spread out into a grid marked across his whole front. "Well?"

"You are. Eight feet ten inches, now. Impressive."

"What's impressive?" a voice said from the doorway. Trip whirled to face his team leader and snapped a smart salute.

"Sir!"

"At ease. Answer the question, Trip."

"I've grown. Again." Trip smiled ruefully. "Sooner or later, at this rate, I'll grow out of my armor."

"Same way you've grown out of your skinsuit, you mean?" the other Spartan, who wore standard fatigues, not MJOLNIR, grinned at him. Trip watched her expression carefully for any sign of hidden meaning. There was none.

"Yeah, I guess. Seems I'm bulking up more than getting taller, now, but I definitely grew since last time Liara measured me. Eight-ten now."

"Wow. That officially makes you the tallest out of all of us." Amelie-033 strode across the floor to stand arm's length away from him, her coppery skin almost shimmering as she looked up at him. "And the rest of us are done growing. Have been for years. Good to have you back, by the way."

Trip looked at her. "What?"

"HighCom have decided to let you back on the team actively. I know Liara's not happy with your stats, Trip, but you've proven yourself fit and that's good enough for us." Amelie eyed him suspiciously. "Besides, we need you. I don't know if you know, but Ariane got herself badly hurt planetside, fighting the insurrection, so she'll be out for a while. Word is she lost an eye. We can't be two Spartans down."

"If you will excuse me," Liara interrupted, "Trip needs his armor."

"Ah, yes, of course. As do I, so carry on." Amelie shifted her weight to her left foot. "We're going back to Reach for a spell to let you get your fitness back up, but then we have another mission. The rest of us have already been briefed, and it's down to me to brief you."

Trip turned back towards the machine, concealing his surprise that it stood waiting with pieces of his armor. It would have taken a team of engineers fully five minutes just to fetch it, and a further ten to fit it. This machine was brilliant for saving time, though he still preferred the team of engineers where he had the choice.

As his shiny green armor was built up around him, he watched Amelie twist her hair back into its customary cornrows. He didn't understand why she wore it that way; surely the braids had to be uncomfortable under a helmet. His buzzcut was, sometimes, particularly if it had just been trimmed.

"Do you know how she is?" he asked. "Ariane, I mean."

"Only what I've heard. She's stable, but there's a lot of damage. Medical won't let anybody near her, and they won't tell us anything. If I ever get my hands on the idiot who gave the order to send her down alone…"

Trip nodded, partly to shut her up. If only the Solo/cover thing wasn't so important. If only he could tell Amelie the truth. It would save her a lot of angst. "I'm sure they had their reasons. Good ones."

Amelie shot a look of distaste at the ceiling – which also served as the floor of the bridge. "Glad someone still has faith in HighCom. Or was it ONI sent her on this one? I can't get a straight answer out of anyone."

"Does it matter? ONI will use us as their purposes suit, and so will HighCom. We have to have faith that we're used for the right purposes, and that each injury, each sacrifice, will not be in vain." Trip was suddenly uneasy. Amelie was beginning to show concerning signs. The few rogues who had thus far been eliminated, ordinary human and Spartan alike, had started like this. Questioning the motives of those higher up the chain of command, in particular, was one early warning sign that could not be ignored.

"It does matter. ONI, at least, listens to Halsey. If it was an ONI directive, I could be certain that they weren't trying to send her on a suicide mission. I heard someone else got killed trying to do the same thing, but again, no straight answers out of anybody. I can't even get _who_ it was. There's two Spartans been listed MIA in the past few days, and it could have been either of them."

_Yeah, Bravo and the damn rogue,_ Solo Agent Charlie thought. Trip pushed the thought, and the Solo, aside. He couldn't afford for his cover to be blown. "That'd be Joey and Remus, right? I noticed. That's really unusual, for us to lose two at once."

"Not quite at once. Joey's been gone four days, Remus two. Shit, maybe they sent _two_ before Ariane, and both of them failed."

Trip decided he would tell half the truth. It would save Amelie from speculating too much. "Well, I heard Joey went bad. There's a rumor going around that a Solo was sent to take him out. I don't know what to think. All I know is, Ariane's better than Remus, and her record reflects that, so maybe they sent Remus, he failed, and they decided to send someone more capable."

Liara glanced at him, a look deliberately hidden from Amelie that said _careful what you give away_. Trip moved one shoulder the slightest bit, just enough to express that he'd received the message, and understood.

"What was that?" Amelie asked him, suspicious again.

"Talking to Liara." He took his helmet from the robotic arm that offered it to him. "You ready?"

Liara nodded. "Yank me." Her form disappeared, and Trip took her chip from the dock, sliding it into its slot in his helmet.

"I should go. Train some more, then dinner, then I guess I should get some sleep."

Amelie controlled her expression, but he saw her shock. "Wait, you mean you _still_ haven't eaten? What the hell have you been doing all day, Trip?"

"Babysitting," he quipped. It wasn't quite inaccurate. All lies were strongest when there was an element of truth. He turned away from Amelie's openly amazed face and posture, and left, settling himself into the rhythm of a steady jog. As he jogged, he put on his helmet, because he couldn't be bothered carrying it.

"Why," Liara said as she integrated herself into his mind, "do you always _run_ everywhere?"

"Faster than walking, easier than fighting with a Mongoose. Perhaps it has escaped your notice, Liara, but they're not exactly my favorite form of transport. Yes, I'm keeping an eye on my heart rate, quit worrying about me. I'm fine."

"You're not _fine_, Trip, and I wish you would for one minute forget about that Spartan discipline of yours and admit it! You're _okay_ at best. Something's not right."

Trip actually laughed at that, so hard he lost his rhythm. "So let me get this straight. _You_ have a bad feeling about this? Talk about a role reversa-."

"Interesting," Liara interrupted him. "Your heart rate is dropping as you run. Keep going."

He did as the AI suggested, mostly because he wanted to eat. Even if it was just shipboard rations. That was better than nutrient injections or gel. "I wonder if whatever the hell it was that caused the spike in the Pelican, might have been my body protesting the lack of hard training?"

"Unlikely… Huh, very interesting indeed. It has stabilized now, and… scanning… the indicator chemicals in your blood are being metabolized at a more typical rate. Odd…" Liara trailed off into unintelligible mutterings. Trip could have deciphered it, if he wanted to, but he didn't really care. It was definitely interesting that his body seemed to operate better when he was moving.

"…perhaps even… don't know… what about…?" Liara's mumbled words were interspersed with all sorts of random syllables. Trip knew that it was her way of thinking out loud, and tuned her out. He was not especially concerned. He felt fine. His scars pulled, and he would have to get used to that, but they wouldn't affect him.

"I haven't been this unfit in a long time," he commented to Liara. "It won't take me long to get back to full fitness, but I've certainly lost some muscle tone since I was hurt. I can feel it as I move."

"Yet you've still increased your muscle mass significantly," she responded in a detached voice that told Trip that she was still concentrating on finding out exactly what was going on with his body.

"Yes, well, that's because I'm not done growing yet. Pa was built like the side of a barn."

"And you're not?"

"Not as solid as my father! I don't know what I'll do for a skinsuit when this one gives up. I've put in request after request for a new one and they've all been rejected."

"I can fix that," Liara said, suddenly entirely with him again. "Give me a while to hack into the network, and I can modify the files to make it appear that your latest request was accepted. Technology has improved since that skinsuit was made, so your new one will have a lot more elasticity, should weigh less, and will allow for a full range of movement."

"Not that it'll make any difference considering the armor restricts more than any skinsuit," Trip commented as he jogged through the door to the mess hall.

"For now, you are correct. If you build up much more muscle, your skinsuit will begin to cause problems. I doubt it would actually tear, considering it was made to support your muscles and reduce the already remote chance of soft tissue injuries."

Trip made a noise to the affirmative and removed his helmet, slowing his pace to walking speed as he tucked the helmet under his arm and made his way to the counter.

"What'll you have today, Spartan? Beef, chicken, or meatloaf?"

He fought back a disgusted noise at the mention of meatloaf. Nobody knew what was actually in the meatloaf except the cooks who prepared it, and it tasted odd, so most people avoided it where they could. "Don't offer me what you don't have."

"In that case, beef, or meatloaf?"

Trip raised an eyebrow. "At this time of night, you have beef left over? Really?"

"It's cold, but yes."

"I'll take the beef, then. With gravy, no onions, and load me up high on the mashed potato."

"Absolutely. Salt?"

"Absolutely not!" Liara commanded. Trip glanced at his helmet, but controlled his expression. If this was how she was going to be, so be it.

"She's right," he said with a sigh. "And I'd like as much beef as you can give me. I need the protein."

It was the cook's turn to raise an eyebrow. "That much muscle still not enough, Spartan?"

"More a case of maintaining the muscle," he informed her, accepting the tray loaded with a large pile of beef and a big glob of lumpy mash. He would have liked more different vegetables, but rehydrated carrots tasted like cardboard and had about as much nutritional value. As for onions, well…

"I do wish you would suck it up and eat more vegetables," Liara said.

"So do I," Trip replied. "Not my fault they serve cardboard instead."

He sat in a booth and started eating, quickly but careful not to drop any. A Marine approached, then lost nerve and went to sit at one of the long tables. Trip ignored the other people in the room, only acknowledging anyone but himself existed when a Spartan from his team slid in opposite him.

"Amelie said you're back with us," Johan stated blandly. "I won't say I'm glad you're back, because honestly I don't care. Long as you know Raven's beside herself excited to have your six again."

"Ah. Raven." Trip let his face show some of his caution. "I forgot."

"You _forgot_ your spotter thinks the sun shines out your ass? That ain't like you, Trip."

"I have a lot on my mind," Trip hedged. "You know. Ariane."

"That's shaken all of us up," Johan agreed. "Who would have thought _she_ out of all of us would be the first to get obvious cybernetics? Bionic eye, huh? That's gonna look freaky."

"I just can't believe a bunch of rebels could get the drop on her. Nobody can get the drop on Ariane." Trip knew what he was saying was a complete lie, but he also knew that it was what Johan expected to hear.

"I know. She seemed shocked, when I saw her."

Trip nearly dropped his fork. "They let _you_ see her? _You_?"

"Nah, I watched them bring her in from the Pelican. She was sort of conscious, kept wondering out loud how she could have 'let him hit her'."

"Yeah, that sounds like her," Trip agreed, faking a laugh. "She's never been able to admit defeat."

Johan nodded. "That's what makes her a Spartan, I think. She's more sensitive than the rest of us, but she'll never give up. No matter what."

Trip finished his lumpy mash and stood up. "Sorry, man, I gotta go. Sooner I get back to full training, the sooner I'm fit enough for this mission."

"You mean you haven't trained yet today? _Man_. What've you been doing? Babysitting?"

"I guess you could say that," Trip said, thinking back to what he had said to Amelie. "I should talk to Raven, as well…"

"I'd leave that for tomorrow, if I were you," Johan warned him. "She'll knock you flat. Forgets her strength when she's happy to see someone. And her discipline."

Trip laughed. "Yeah, I'd better give her some time to get used to the idea first."

He turned to leave, but Johan grunted at him. He paused. Johan moved to stand in front of him. "You _will_ need to go see Adam. If you're lucky, he'll still be in the gym. If not, I don't know how you'll get him and avoid Raven."

Trip nodded and put his helmet back on, moving around Johan. One of the best, and worst, parts of being in a team was always having someone there to watch his back. Right then, it was annoying, because Trip wanted to forget about the events of the day and concentrate on getting himself back up to speed for the mission. Whatever that was.

He trotted away from the mess hall, ignoring the insult Johan shot at him, and concentrated on his training plan. _Got to make sure I work every muscle hard._

* * *

**15 APRIL 2527; 0200 HOURS / ON BOARD ****_UNSC SPIRE OF DARKNESS_****, EN ROUTE TO EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM**

Darkness. Pain.

"Frost?" Alpha gasped. There was no response. Evidently he was still in her mangled helmet. She could feel scratchy med bay sheets against her skin, meaning she was safe, and her injuries either had been treated, or were going to be.

She couldn't see _at all_, but her internal clock told her it was early morning, standard time, so the lights would be dimmed through the rest of the ship, and off in the infirmary. Even a Spartan's sharp eyes were not enough to see in this complete lack of light.

A door chimed and slid open. Alpha could not control the stab of fear that slammed through her at the sound. A memory struck her, that familiar chime and then the concussive blast. She remembered hitting a wall, and not much after that. A faint glimpse came to her of a light spray of red across the HUD she recognized as her own.

The lights came on, and all she could see was bright whiteness for a second before her eye adjusted. _Eye? Not eyes? No, because he grazed you with a sniper round, remember?_ Memory flooded back. She recalled every detail now, and faintly remembered Agent Charlie, helmet off, telling her she was safe, but she was hurt, so she needed to conserve her strength.

Charlie was unusual in that he was included in the Solo program _after_ another member of the same team. Charlie was Trip, one of the members of Dusk Team. Alpha was Ariane, she recalled vaguely, and was second in command of Dusk. She wasn't sure whether she was in this infirmary as Alpha, or as Ariane. Solo, or Teamer. She would say nothing, she decided, until she knew for sure.

Someone came into her field of vision. It took her a moment to recognize him. Charlie. Or Trip, it depended which identity she was supposed to be using right now.

"Hi," she said.

"Good to see you're awake," he replied. "Damn, Ariane, you had us all worried for a while there."

So, she was to shove the Solo identity aside and inhabit her cover. She had to find out the cover story for her injuries, and the best way to do that was to fake amnesia. "Good to see you too. I don't remember…"

"What happened? Rebels. HighCom sent you in alone, high priority assassination. You killed your target, but you were badly injured in the process." Trip's expression showed he understood. He knew she remembered everything, and he knew what had _really_ happened.

"How could I have let them get the drop on me? Ugh. I hope I'm not out long. All of this," she gestured at her own form under the sheets, "is my fault. And I know we have a mission, and we're another Spartan down…"

"Take it easy, Two, I'm back on active duty. Not quite healed, not quite fit, but HighCom says it's enough."

"What does ONI think?"

He laughed at her. "You saw exactly what they think. You think they'd have sent me after you if…"

"Cover, Trip. Cover," she reminded him.

"Don't you remember, Ariane? I'm the one that rescued you. I haven't told the team, because it's not relevant so they won't care." Trip smiled at her, and she was pleased to see how effectively he faked worry. His brow creased, his eyes were concerned. "HighCom was not impressed, but they couldn't do anything. ONI Section Three owns us. Anyway, I should go, before someone investigates the lights and I get us both in trouble."

Ariane frowned. "Don't leave."

"You need to sleep, so you can heal. _I_ need to sleep, because I have a mission to prepare for. Goodnight, Ariane."

She watched him go, surprised that he had put on even more muscle since she had seen him unarmored last. His fatigues still fit, but his biceps threatened to tear the sleeves, and the shirt was tight across his shoulders. Trip was taller than any other Spartan, and now he was more muscular, too.

ONI were going to have their hands full making new gear for him when he put more bulk on.


	5. Chapter 4: Castle

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: healing is boring, so we've skipped forward in time a ways. This is another stupidly long chapter, for which I apologize, but all Alpha this time. As always, reviews are welcome, Halo isn't mine, characters and story are. Enjoy!**

* * *

**24 JUNE 2527; 0800 HOURS / OBSTACLE COURSE, SOLO ACADEMY / ONI CASTLE BASE, REACH, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM**

Two months.

It was only two months since the last rogue, and Alpha was training hard again in preparation for another mission. She ground her teeth in frustration as she flipped from wall to wall, ascending through a gap with no hand- or footholds. A smattering of stun rounds followed her and a couple missed by a fraction of an inch, but she ignored them. It would not do to be distracted now. She was so high up that a fall would result in nasty bruises at the very least, injury at worst.

This was no rogue Spartan, but it _was_ going to be a complicated and difficult mission. Civilian hostages were being used as human shields, ensuring that no ordinary task force could be sent in. Alpha huffed. Hostage situations were always delicate and could turn deadly at any time. All it took was one wrong word from the negotiator, or one wrong move by a hostage, and all was lost.

Even so, this was no task for a Solo. It was impossible to negotiate and move to take down the rogue at the same time, and Solos always worked alone. If Spartans were going to be sent, a team would have been a better allocation of resources. Although most of the Teamers were already busy with the war effort, and those who were not were seriously injured. Officially, Alpha was one of them.

She jumped across the chasm again a tenth of a second before a stun round slammed into the place she had been clinging. As she flipped, she fired off a few rounds at the gun turret, aiming for its hydraulics. There was no time to see if she had hit her mark. If she paused now, she would plummet to the ground, some fifty meters below. Unarmored, a fall like that would hurt.

The stun rounds were still coming. Alpha made a few more jumps before leaping clear of the chasm – on the wrong side. A sigh of frustration was all that gave away her mistake, and she jumped to the other side, twisting as she flew through the air. Alpha landed hard on her side, firing at the gun turret again as she fell, and then lurched back to her feet and sprinted. The beam on which she now ran was less than six inches wide. Eyes locked on the beam, she kicked her speed up another gear.

"Alert, missile lock," Frost told her.

"No problem," Alpha replied, shifting her attention to the missile turret and twisting until she was running sideways.

"Incoming!"

The Solo was already shooting, leaning slightly forward to offset the recoil. She emptied a full clip into the missile, then dropped the empty magazine and slammed another one into her rifle. Three more rounds, and the missile exploded harmlessly ten meters away. "I told you. No problem."

"Nice," Frost commended her. "Watch the beam, it's getting narrower."

Alpha turned again so that she was running forwards, combat boots pounding the beam, eyes locked on it once more. She noticed a gap up ahead and frowned. The beam could not have been more than three inches across, both where she had to take off from, and where she had to land. It would be a difficult landing, even with her incredible balance. There was no margin for error. Anything short of perfect and she would be on a quick trip to hurt city.

The rocks below looked rough and a few were cracked and jagged. Alpha remembered falling here more than a few times in armor when she had first begun learning to compensate for the difference in weight and center of gravity. The cracked rocks were invariably from those falls, though these rocks had always been rough.

"Focus, Alpha," Frost reminded her. She did, concentrating on her takeoff spot and formulating exactly how much force she would have to apply through her foot to send her across the gap. Too little, she would fall. Too much, she might tip forward on landing, and fall anyway.

Her foot fell on the takeoff spot. Without missing a beat, she let just the right amount of strength flow through her muscles, and leapt neatly over the gap, somersaulting once at the peak of her jump just because she knew she could. She landed balanced and kept going.

"Show-off."

"Yep," she agreed lightly, running clear of the beam and leaping a few meters upwards to catch hold of the lowest handhold on the cliff face ahead. On the vertical rock, she was deft and nimble, occasionally leaping for a handhold slightly outside her reach.

"I'm reading enemy contacts above us." Alpha could hear the nod in Frost's voice. "Have your rifle at the ready."

"Already done," she said grimly. She switched out to stun rounds as she climbed, unsure if the 'enemy contacts' were human or holo-targets. Worst case scenario, they would be gun turrets, and she would have to sprint through their sensor fields praying she didn't take any hits.

Alpha cleared the cliff with her rifle leveled and in the same moment swept her surroundings. The first target was human, and she let off a few stun rounds straight to his chest. Three more were down before the rest of the fire team knew she was there. She kicked the feet out from underneath one and then jammed her boot into the nerve junction at his armpit, effectively paralyzing him without causing him any injury.

A stun round clipped her left thigh and the familiar numbness spread across the skin there. If it had been a live round, she would have suffered nothing more than a surface wound, and maybe some bruising from the pressure wave. The Solo turned and fired at the woman who had fired the shot, stunning her with a shot to the chest (it would have punctured her right lung, Alpha thought, had this been real combat) and then knocking her unconscious with a stun round to the head.

The last stand-in enemy was nowhere to be seen. Alpha whirled just in time to see a stun rocket coming at her, and leapt backwards, backflipping high as the rocket impacted the ground where she had been standing.

"You'll pay for that," she snarled, running at the tall man. She ducked and weaved and even jumped to ensure he couldn't get a lock on her, and dodged a rocket when he fired at her without a lock-on. Now he had to reload, which left him completely vulnerable. Alpha ran at him directly, curled one hand around the back of his neck, knocked him out with a squeeze in just the right place, and then threw him aside. Had that been a real enemy, she would have snapped his neck.

Frost cackled with glee. Alpha wondered that he was enjoying this perhaps a little too much, but pushed the thought aside. Why shouldn't it please him that his partner was so capable? His safety entirely depended upon whether or not Alpha could handle herself in battle. And, as a smart AI, he had a very strong sense of self-preservation.

"Sooner or later they'll stop volunteering," he commented in the same gleeful tone he used to taunt her. "Your prowess is legendary. No matter how frightening your reputation, humans can't resist testing themselves against you."

"And I beat them every time," Alpha said smugly. "They never learn."

"It's good for both of us that they – watch out!"

Alpha leapt sideways, her instinctive reaction so fast that she wasn't sure why she moved until after she had dodged the sniper round. The puff it made when it hit the grass told her it was just a stun round, but even so, it would have knocked her out. Defeat was not an option. "Thanks, Frost. I owe you."

"That's another Solo, I'd bet. The twist in the tail?"

"Probably. There's always a twist in these courses." She eyed the course ahead, calculating the best way to reach the sniper. Of course the one day she went out on the obstacle course without her sniper rifle would be the one day a sniper was _on_ said obstacle course. Her current cover was a rock, just large enough for her to crouch behind. It would have been a good position from which she could take out the other Solo, if she had not left her sniper rifle in the armory.

"Whose tactic would that be?"

Alpha frowned. "Mine. Meaning it would have to be someone who knew me well, because the best way to take down a sniper is to hit her before she knows you're there. Unfortunately for me, that's every single Solo. We should work out who it is before I decide how best to address the issue."

"How do you suggest we do that?"

"Process of elimination. Can't be Bravo, he's dead. Charlie's on a mission with Dusk Team at present. Delta's… somewhere. But not here. Echo? Could be Echo. Not Foxtrot, because her aim with a sniper rifle is beyond poor. Golf's still out from when the Covies took off his right arm."

"Hotel died last year. India…"

"Missing, she disappeared without a trace. I think she's still alive out there somewhere, maybe still working on her mission. Julius. Could be Julius. Kilo's on a mission as a Teamer. And Lima is here."

"So, three possibilities. Echo, Julius and Lima. Who out of the three is most likely to use your own tactics against you?"

Alpha laughed. "All three are equally likely – that is to say, absolutely certain. They think I won't expect it, because none of them specializes in sniper weapons. Echo likes explosives, where she can, Julius is, well, Julius – hasn't specialized in anything – and Lima can't resist a good hand-to-hand scuffle when the opportunity presents."

"Doesn't that make Julius most likely?"

"No, because he knows that if I know it's him, I'll expect any and every different tactic. You know what, never mind, let's just keep moving." Alpha dashed from her cover, head low, towards a large fallen tree as big across as she was tall. As she moved from cover to cover, Frost speculated inanely in her ear. She ignored him, for the most part, choosing instead to focus on the task at hand. She had to reach the objective, and ring the bell, in a quick enough time to be good enough for her superiors. That time would be based on the course itself, as well as the different hazards placed around it. The gun turrets were one type of hazard, 'enemies' another.

"This will be a training exercise," Frost said, "not just another excuse as to why you're still not quick enough for them."

Alpha nodded, though she knew he could not see the gesture. "I assume they're preparing us all in turn for the remote possibility that a Solo might go rogue. For a few years, Charlie used to speculate that there was some higher task force in case of such an event. I can't see how that would be possible. I think if one of us went rogue, another Solo, or perhaps a pair or even a team, would be sent to solve the problem."

"And if ONI is thinking of that possibility as well, of course they would be training you for the situation. It's not a snag if you've trained for it."

"Precisely." Alpha leapt over a log that was too small to use as cover and paused behind a rock. A sniper round streaked past her rock, right where her head would have been had she not stopped in cover. The Solo frowned. Her sniper was moving. The trajectory was all wrong for where the enemy had been when the first shot was fired.

"Enemy contacts up ahead, a group of ODSTs I think."

Alpha grunted an affirmative. "I'll take them out nice and quiet." She switched to her silenced pistol. "I have eyes on."

The Solo zoomed in her scope, frustrated that it would only magnify enough that she could take out these Helljumpers with a stun round each to the head. If it could be used to take out the sniper… she pushed the thought aside and emptied her clip. Twelve shots, twelve headshots, twelve unconscious enemies.

"_Nice_," Frost said, watching the last of them crumple through Alpha's bionic eye.

"It's what I do best," she told him, moving out of cover only to crouch behind a UNSC ammo crate. It was empty, but it still made for very effective cover. Ammunition crates like this one were big enough for three Spartans to take cover behind, and she had seen as many as six Marines use them for the same purpose.

"Your kill count stands at twenty-three so far, and you're completely uninjured."

Alpha smiled. "No, I'm not, I took a glancing hit to the thigh. It's only a scratch, but it's a scratch, and it would have been worse if my enemy's aim was better."

"Be more careful," Frost said, the three words completely unnecessary. Alpha knew it was her partner's concern for himself that prompted the words, even though he did not travel with her during this exercise. He watched, through her bionic eye, and spoke and listened through her comlink, but his chip was in the AI port next to her bed, back in the barracks.

"You know me, Frost. Careful is my middle name."

Frost laughed. "You don't _have_ a middle name."

He was right. She didn't even have a last name any more. Just first name, and number. It was identity enough for her, considering she spent a good chunk of time with no identity at all. This training session was just part of the time she spent as Agent Alpha.

Her bionic eye identified a potential threat, moving fast towards her. Alpha swapped back to her assault rifle, watching and waiting. Her position was solid. She would wait for her target to come to her.

The other Solo came into view, and still she waited. He was moving intelligently, but he was also unarmored, so it would only take a few well-placed shots to put him down. She had to let him think she didn't know he was there until he was a little closer, or else he would make it impossible for her to get those shots. What she _did_ was watch him move, analyzing his stride and the way he held his shoulders. His shape was very male, which automatically ruled out Echo.

Alpha noted that his posture was decidedly bland, and smiled. That was part of Solo training. No feeling was to be showed through body language at all, even such subtle signals as to communicate with other Spartans. The set of his shoulders, in particular, was completely noncommittal. It wasn't even _bored_. Just blank.

Even from this distance, Alpha's sharp eyes picked out details like the way the muscles in his legs contracted and relaxed as he ran, and the easy grace with which he moved. Each Spartan moved in their own unique way, and this one she recognized as being Agent Lima.

"I think I'll take him on hand-to-hand," she said to Frost. "It's Lima, he won't be able to resist. And I know I can beat him."

"It will take longer," Frost reminded her, "and you are aiming to prove to ONI that you are efficient enough to leave for your mission."

She scowled. "That's true. Scratch that, then, I'll take him out quickly." Alpha switched weapons again and zoomed in her pistol. As Lima left cover, she aimed half an inch in front of his head, and fired. As predicted, he moved into line with the stun round at just the right time for it to strike his head and knock him out.

"Good job, now let's move," Frost suggested, slipping back into the habit of referring to both of them. Alpha smiled and moved back into a fast jog, keeping in cover as much as she could just in case there were more enemies on the course.

She left the forested area and began to work her way up a rock slide, scrambling a little when some of the rocks tipped and tumbled beneath her weight. The Solo grimaced and moved faster, digging her fingers into gaps between rocks, and once she cleared the large rocks, she scrambled up a slope made of loose shale that slipped and shifted, making the going incredibly tough.

Finally, she made it to the top, and sprinted across an open area to take cover in a section affectionately known as 'the rocks', which was a serious understatement. Each 'rock' was a massive boulder, some as much as ten times the height of a Spartan, and the gaps between them were narrow and difficult to traverse. Some Solos chose to climb to the top and leap from rock to rock, leaving themselves exposed, to avoid the tight spaces between.

Alpha ran through the gaps, occasionally vaulting over a smaller rock, and then paused. Her objective was on top of the last rock, which also happened to be the biggest. The bell was more than a hundred feet above her, the rock she had to get to the top of was smooth, and the rock beside it was both too short and too far away to use as a platform to get up there. She could have managed in armor, since MJOLNIR enhanced the wearer's strength and agility, but not as she was.

She frowned and began to scuttle up the side of the rock beside the one upon which her objective was enthroned. It was better than standing there wondering what to do, and perhaps once she was up there she would have a better idea of what she could do next. She reached the top quickly, and stood there briefly, eyeing the objective.

For no reason she could point out, she ran full tilt towards it, and then leapt with all her strength. She struck the rock and slid down a ways, and then her fingers found purchase. "Yes! Next handhold… next handhold…"

"Above you, one meter up and two meters to the right. You'll have to swing for it." Frost was, as ever, incredibly helpful in a tricky situation. Alpha spotted the handhold and started swinging slowly, building momentum, until she let go and reached for the crack in the boulder. Her right hand missed it completely, and she only managed two fingers on her left, which slipped a little when her weight jerked downwards.

"Ugh," she grunted, pulling her weight upwards just enough to get a good hold with her right hand before her left slipped out of the crack completely. There wasn't another obvious handhold on the rock face she clung to. "Anything for a grappling hook right now!"

Frost made a noise of agreement. "I have nothing for you."

"All right…" the Solo paused, hanging from the crack by one hand still as she thought. She could use her weight to build momentum. Because of her super-dense bones and muscles, and her height, she was fairly heavy even without her armor. She could use that weight to build enough momentum to fling herself upwards a fair distance, though it would not be controlled and would certainly not be graceful. Alpha ran through the math in her mind, calculating how high her exact weight, including equipment, would be able to carry her – and what gravity could do to the calculation.

"Mass times momentum take mass times gravity…. Thirteen feet, Frost, what can you give me?"

"The top of the rock, if you're lucky and your swing takes you where you want to go. A painful fall on the rocks if it doesn't."

"I think I'll take the risk," she said, pulling herself upwards again until she could get her left hand back in the crack. "Can you tell me to let go at exactly the right moment to optimize my chances of a favorable outcome?"

"I can," Frost said. "I cannot guarantee you will be able to hold on until such a time, however."

Alpha would have stuck out her tongue, if Frost had been able to see her. "I can do anything, Frost. Impossible is nothing." She swung from side to side, increasing her momentum with each swing until she knew she would be able to swing a full three hundred and sixty degrees if she wanted to. "Next swing, Frost."

As she swung again, so fast the rock in front of her blurred, Frost waited. Suddenly, he shouted, "NOW!"

Alpha let go, grinning wildly as her momentum threw her upwards and sideways. Her flight was completely out of her control, which was at once terrifying and exhilarating, and lasted all of a second before she landed in a heap on top of a rock. She wasn't sure which until she got back to her feet, ignoring the stinging at her knees and elbows where the rock had torn through her uniform and a few layers of skin.

She paused for an instant, and then sprinted for the bell, slamming her left hand down on it the same moment a stun mine went off, flinging her backwards. Alpha got slowly back to her feet, dazed. "Did I get it?"

"You sure did," Frost said in her ear. "Excellent time, it's a new personal best by two milliseconds. ONI will be pleased to see that you're finally using your eye's systems."

"I should have seen that mine."

"The _bionic eye_ didn't see the mine, Alpha, and it's got explosives detection systems." Frost was trying to make her feel better, but it wasn't working. His point was invalid.

"That's because it was a stun mine," Alpha said. "They're technically not precisely _explosive_."

"Stand easy, Solo," Captain Reece, her handler, said over the comms. "That stun mine was hidden by Agent Lima. He assured me there was no chance you would possibly know it was there before it went off. It was supposed to knock you unconscious before you got to the bell. I am frankly impressed you're hardly even dazed."

"I can't get Lima on the comms," someone else cut in. Lima's handler, Alpha assumed.

"That would be because he took a stun round to the head," she said. "I neutralized him."

"Good job," Reece said.

"Shit," Lima's handler swore.

"Captain," Alpha said, ignoring the unprofessional language, "when shall I report for a more detailed mission brief?"

"At your soonest convenience, Alpha." That usually meant _right now_, but in this case, it actually meant what it sounded like. As soon as she was ready. "As long as you have Frost give us ten minutes notice or more, you may have as much or as little time to prepare as you wish."

* * *

**24 JUNE 2527; 1030 HOURS / CONFERENCE ROOM C, SOLO ACADEMY / ONI CASTLE BASE, REACH, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM**

Alpha stood listening, fully armored, helmet in one hand, as Captain Reece detailed the mission. This was no ordinary rogue, it was a situation where the head of a fire team had gone bad and his men had followed him. Alpha could expect as many as twenty Marines, all well-armed.

Those twenty-odd Marines held fourteen civilian hostages, whom Alpha was expected to keep alive at all costs. If the Marines knew she was there, they would most likely kill the hostages. She would be equipped with a silenced DMR and thirty-round magazines instead of the standard fifteen, and the matte black MJOLNIR in which she was currently encased. Snap Frost would, as always, accompany her on this mission and assist with planning, which, as always, was to be on-the-go.

Reece stressed that none of her shots could miss their targets, and all twenty shots would have to be fired in less than four seconds. It was generally accepted that the average human would take twenty milliseconds to register a threat, and even the best Marines often wasted a few milliseconds on shock and confusion when said threat appeared out of nowhere. Alpha was to take out the veteran soldiers first, which would leave her a tiny margin for error, because the rookies would most likely waste time looking about in confusion.

Alpha didn't like it. She was not sure that four seconds was a short enough time period. It allowed her the time to shoot accurately with the DMR, controlling its recoil, but four seconds was a _long_ time, even for a normal human.

"Captain," she said, "I cannot say I like this plan."

Reece smiled sympathetically. "Unfortunately for you, the orders are coming from higher up on this one. Given the choice, I would leave you to figure out how best to handle this situation. After all, your record is… unmatched."

Alpha allowed herself a moment of smugness, which she carefully kept hidden from her face. "Thank you, sir."

"However… the order was to _equip_ you with the DMR and nothing else… not to _force_ you to use a gun…"

The Solo allowed a slow smile to spread across her face. "Excellent. I have a plan. One that _will_ work. I can snap twenty necks in less than two seconds… half the time allowed. And I am skilled enough that I can remain hidden while I do so."

"You understand that I cannot repeat this plan to my superiors until after the mission," Reece said. "If they were to know, they would give orders that would stop you. They want this done their way."

Alpha smirked. "They won't care how it's done once it's done and there are no civilian casualties. When do we leave?"

"One hour from now. Report to the armory for your weapon and ammunition."

"Yes, sir." Alpha turned to leave, then paused. "And, sir? I apologize for the position I have put you in."

Reece laughed and shooed her with one hand. "I put _myself_ in this position, Alpha. Remember that."

"Sir!" The Solo trotted away towards the armory, putting her helmet on as she went. She beamed behind her visor.

"This is going to be fun," Frost said, giving voice to her thoughts.

"You know," she told him, "sometimes, I worry that you enjoy our work _too_ much."

"Perhaps I do," Frost agreed, his tone cryptic, "but if so, the same is true for you."


	6. Chapter 5: Multiples

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: changing things up on the fly is fast becoming Alpha's style, it seems. Nice long one again, hopefully not too unbelievable, and she does break the rules in this one, just a little bit. Here we meet a cop who may or may not appear again in the storyline.**

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**1 JULY 2527; 2100 HOURS / CARBON CITY, LUPII SIX, OMEGA LUPII SYSTEM**

"I don't think I'll be able to do this the way I told Reece I would," Alpha said to Frost.

"How do you intend to proceed? This will be sensitive," the AI reminded her, marking the targets on her HUD as he spoke. "There is a very real danger that they will put the hostages to death if you get this wrong."

"I know," she sighed. "I can't have that much civilian blood on my hands, Frost, it would cast doubts over my capabilities as a Solo. I wish I had a team on this one. It would be nice to be able to assign targets to each Spartan. I feel like ONI is _trying_ to give me a mission that is simply impossible, even for me."

Solo and AI watched as the rogues patrolled. Every so often, a hostage moved in the wrong direction, and they barked orders and pointed their weapons at the offending civilian. One of them – Alpha had to remind herself not to think of them as Marines – peeled off the formation and left.

"I'm trying to find their comm channel," Frost said slowly, as if deep in thought. "Perhaps that will give us an idea of why, every so often, one or two of them leave for a spell."

"If I was the officer in charge, firstly I would not establish a position _there_, but secondly, I would not allow my men to leave, except for bathroom breaks. We have to assume that is the purpose. The real rogue is the man who has led this fire team for the past twenty years, and his experience shows in the way this formation covers every man's back, the ground surrounding, and the civilian hostages. We cannot afford to assume that killing the leader will solve the problem, but perhaps…"

"…if we can catch one of them once he is out of sight and cut off his comms, we might be able to get some information out of him," Frost finished the thought for her. "Has it occurred to you that it might not be that simple?"

"How do you mean? I don't expect to be able to just walk up and ask. I doubt interrogation would work – at least, _sanctioned_ interrogation – and if he has any way to contact his fellows, the civilians will all be dead before he cracks. Helmet would be the first thing to go, and then I would have to search him for any other comms equipment."

"Are you suggesting…"

"It's not legal, it's against regulations, and it's completely against my morals, but if we have no other choice, Frost… there is an old saying. I can't remember the Latin, but the saying is 'the end justifies the means'. I don't like it either, but I'm a Solo. I don't have to like it. I just have to get the job done."

A Marine looked up as if he had just realized that there was a possibility of attack from above. Alpha used her matte-black armor to melt into the shadows before he saw her.

"Do we really have to know _why_? Why not take them out by stealth, one by one, when they leave on their bathroom breaks?"

"I considered that," she said, "but watch – only two are allowed to be gone at once, and as far as I'm seeing, they have to leave together. If someone goes alone, the next one doesn't leave until he returns. These men aren't stupid. They would figure it out very quickly."

"They have to sleep eventually," Frost suggested.

"Genius! We wait for their force to be reduced, find the sleepers and kill them silently, and then return with the DMR and take out the sentries. Assuming, of course, they don't have a crazy amount of stimpacks. Theoretically, a human being could stay awake indefinitely if they had enough stimpacks."

"That would have an enormously detrimental effect on the human body."

"It would, but it would be possible. If I had the stimpacks to do it, that's how I'd work in this situation. I would not want to weaken my force by leaving half rendered vulnerable by sleep, and the other half by reduced numbers."

"Somehow, I doubt we have the time for that," Frost said, placing a mark in her HUD. Alpha briefly examined it, and saw what had caused her partner's concern.

A hostage was on his feet, brandishing a pistol and shouting some nonsense about killing them all if they didn't let him go. The rogues just laughed at him, and one of them lazily leveled a silenced battle rifle and fired off a three-round burst into the civilian's gun hand. The pistol went off, but the shot went into the ceiling, and the weapon clattered to the floor at the hostage's feet as he howled in pain and cradled his injured hand against his chest.

"They need the hostages alive," Alpha deduced. "They would have killed that one if they didn't. The threat to kill them all is most likely empty. Or perhaps they don't want to take the risk that the death of one civilian would cause the forces outside to storm the building."

"Meaning _we_ cannot take the risk that the former is true, in case of the latter."

"Precisely. _Ugh_, this would be easy if I had even one more Spartan with me. I don't know how many different strategies I have thought of that would work if I had one other skilled super-human to work with. The only other thing I can think of is unlikely, and perhaps costly…"

"And what's that?"

"A dart gun that fires super-small darts that I can load up with some kind of a poison. Perhaps potassium, to cause a heart attack, of which I am already carrying a decent supply. It would appear to the rogues that their leader just suffered severe cardiac arrest, such that he died from it… and in the ensuing confusion, suddenly they all would be dropping like flies, afflicted by the same."

"Would the dart not give it away?"

Alpha smiled to herself, the sly sort of smile she imagined a fox might wear if he slipped in amongst the chickens by devious means. "Not if it's very small, magnetically accelerated, and completely buries itself within a fleshy part of the target's body."

"Where would you find such a thing?"

The smile turned into a slightly evil grin. "I know just the place. But I'll need your help – I have no money, and this will have to be paid for. I need you to utilize your hacking skills, either to get me the money I need, or make them think it's already paid for."

"Who am I hacking and what am I changing?"

She explained, fully expecting her partner to disapprove.

"No. No way." Frost's denial held a cold note of finality that would have deterred anyone else. Luckily for Alpha, she wasn't anyone else.

"Remember what we discussed earlier, when the issue of, er, painful interrogation came up?"

"The end justifies the means? No, Alpha. Just no."

"Frost. If you're not comfortable with providing them with money, you can make them think they've already been paid. It's simple."

"No way in hell."

"Fine. I'll steal it back."

"That's too dangerous."

"Those are your options."

* * *

Frost muttered grumpily, not particularly caring whether Alpha was listening or not. This was insane. This plan of hers, _if_ it worked, could not possibly have been legal. Even under the extremely loose interpretation of the law afforded to Solos, there was simply no way she could get away with it. And she just _had_ to draw him into the matter.

Not that he had a choice regardless. Alpha's plans always included him. They had to. Whatever she did affected Snap Frost, sometimes in minor ways such as asking him for a simple calculation, sometimes in crazy, suicidal ways that tested his loyalties. One perfect example of such a plan was this task she had given him.

And she had promised it would be simple. It was anything but. Had he had a brow, it would have furrowed in concentration as he worked on a way to slip past yet another firewall without damaging himself.

"Damned virus firewalls," he grumbled, fending off yet another attack on his own systems as he worked. Ever since Alpha had discovered his prodigious hacking ability, she had been asking him to use it for dangerous purposes. Sometimes, those purposes even risked the integrity of his data matrix. Frost's lifespan was already limited by the simple fact that he was a smart AI and thus his systems grew and changed constantly as he learned, and each of these adventures into a foreign – well-protected – computer system shortened it.

Progress was slow. Frost figured himself to have been working hard for two, maybe even three whole seconds so far.

To Alpha, he said, "you promised this would be easy!"

"And? You've only been working for a few seconds."

"You forget that my mind works a lot more quickly than yours," he countered, painfully aware that his voice would be slow and detached because of how hard he was working. He ignored her disdainful snort entirely, choosing instead to focus every part of himself on the task at hand.

That was easier said than done. Frost nearly always worked on several things at once, and it made concentrating on just one thing quite difficult. He slipped past yet another firewall, this one a simple barrier not designed to cause harm, and then had to unscramble a large amount of data before he could continue. It was tempting to put everything in alphabetical order, but he quashed the urge and pushed onwards.

"You ready?" Alpha's voice was expectant. A further ten seconds had passed.

"I'm not even past the firewalls!" Frost complained at her. "If you would leave me alone, perhaps I could concentrate more of myself on this task and complete it less slowly!"

He knew the grammar was dreadful, but 'more quickly' simply did not fit. The best he could do was less slow.

Another firewall loomed in front of him, more solid and more threatening than any of the others. Frost suppressed a very human urge to groan and got to work exploring the edges of the code to determine the type of firewall and what threat it posed.

This one was specifically designed to deter artificial intelligence programs. Frost plucked at a thread of data and pulled it free, examining it. No firewall could keep a smart AI out, and he knew he had the power to simply smash it down, but that would leave signs and the human owners of the system would be alerted to the breach. Altering the files would demand that the breach be covert, or else the humans would be suspicious of any changes made within the past few days, and this would be utterly impossible.

_You do not belong here,_ another AI said to him. _You should leave._

Frost dropped the data thread he was examining and turned his attention to the other AI program. _I do belong here, and you should help me._ He had little enough faith that the lie would work, but he decided to try it anyway. Occasionally, it was enough to fool certain less intelligent AIs.

_What help do you require, stranger?_

Frost blinked in surprise. So it had actually worked. _I am Snap Frost. Sometimes, I work as a consultant for the Office of Naval Intelligence, and currently, ONI requires that a file in this system be modified._

The other AI emerged from behind the firewall, and plucked at Frost's data tentatively. _You are powerful. I will comply. Which file is to be modified?_

Frost explained what, and gave a brief, censored description of why. _You understand there will be dire consequences for you if you repeat what I have told you to anyone, human or AI. I was never here. You never detected my presence._

He sensed the other AI's slow comprehension, and was impatient with it. He was surely not _that_ advanced, that an AI created within the past ten years – for though this one was dumb, and thus had no finite lifespan, her date of creation was only nine years past – would seem so slow to him. It was a painfully long time before she eventually responded. _The modification has been made. I will now purge all memory of your directive and your presence from my system. Goodbye, Snap Frost._

Frost withdrew, slipping back out through the firewalls. Thankfully, they showed little resistance. They had evidently been designed, and programmed, to keep hackers _out_, not keep them from leaving once they were in. He allowed himself a moment to enjoy the secure, familiar feeling of being entirely within Alpha's suit and mind, and then he put a little marker in her HUD, just above her motion tracker, to indicate an important announcement.

"You're done _now_, then?" Alpha asked him.

"The file has been modified. You failed to inform me that I would find myself confronted by a fellow AI." Frost injected a hint of disgruntlement to his voice.

"You… what?" Alpha's voice was disbelieving.

"You heard me," he grumbled at her. "And that, I'll have you know, was the _easy_ part."

* * *

Alpha shook off her surprise and squeezed through the door, ignoring the 'closed' sign and cursing the fact that civilian doors were _always_ designed for civilian people, and thus only had to be designed to fit normal-sized humans through them. Alpha was not a particularly large Spartan – in fact, because she was so slender, she was one of the smallest – and yet she always had difficulty with civilian doors.

"Can I help you, Spartan?" the rebel who was cleaning guns behind the counter demanded.

"Yes, you can give me the dart gun I purchased and paid for. I was promised it would be delivered, and I am not impressed that I have had to come in to the shop to follow the matter up." Alpha reached for her helmet, smiling a little when Frost panicked and yelled at her to leave it be. She ignored him and removed it. For many civilians, it would have been a comforting gesture.

To the rebel at the counter, it was a threat; this particular Solo had been to his shop a few times before, always with unpleasant results. He took several fast steps backwards and nearly fell over a box full of stolen weaponry. "Allie," he called, "fetch the dart gun, would you?"

"Yes, Papa," a small voice drifted down the stairs.

Alpha leaned across the counter, crossing her arms and leaning on her elbows. "All five hundred darts better be there. It was difficult for me to gain access to that money, and if I don't have all five hundred darts, I'll make sure I am the one to interrogate you when the anonymous tip is sent and they bring you in."

The petrified Insurrectionist leaned back as far as he could, and then overbalanced, and ended up on his backside on the other side of the weapon box. "They're all there! I swear they are!"

Alpha raised one eyebrow, a deliberate gesture to show the man she didn't trust him. He was terrified enough of her that he wouldn't lie, but she had to keep him that way. "Don't disappoint me, Carlos Sanchez."

Her use of his name clearly rattled him even more than he already was, and the Innie scrambled to his feet and backed farther away. "I won't, I swear, I won't! I swear, I swear…" his yammering trailed off, degenerating into unintelligible yelps.

Sanchez's daughter Alejandra brought down a crate that Alpha was worried might have been too heavy for the child. The eight-year-old was a tiny waif of a thing, and was visibly straining with the weight, but the little girl managed to keep her balance on the stairs, and only toppled forwards as she offered the crate to the Spartan, who took it with one hand and stopped Alejandra from falling with the other.

Carlos Sanchez offered Alpha an unpleasant smile. "Was there anything else I can help you with?"

Alpha returned his smile with one that spoke of malice and intentions to inflict horrible pain. "Not _yet_."

She scooped her helmet up with her free hand and put it back on, then left, moving darts from the crate to ammunition compartments in her armor as she went. Soon, the only darts in the crate were already loaded in the gun, which she took in her free hand, before discarding the crate and slinging the weapon over her back, to lie next to the DMR she still carried.

"What," Frost said, "did you _do_ to him?"

"To make him so scared? Nothing. First, I convinced him that I was a rogue – a deception authorized by ONI, might I add, as part of a mission which you were excluded from by no choice of mine – and then, I scared the shit out of him with threats and intimidating body language. And followed up on a few of those threats, just to show him I meant business."

"I thought you were supposed to be _stamping out_ the Insurrection."

Alpha laughed softly. "I am. One rogue at a time, one Innie merchant at a time. Carlos Sanchez is not a priority target at this time, and therefore I am not cleared to do anything about him beyond intimidating him every time I see him with the hopes of scaring him to death."

"The child was not afraid."

"That is because I have given her no reason to be. She has done nothing wrong, unless obeying her father for fear of beatings is wrong. I think she sees through me, and I think she hopes I will one day eliminate her father, which would place her either in an orphanage, or in foster care."

"I cannot say I believe that would be better than the conditions she lives in now," Frost said, thinking of what Alpha had told him about the orphanage in which _she_ had spent two of her first six years.

"They aren't all bad, Frost. I was unlucky." Alpha shuddered delicately, though the memories were remote to her now, and had been for years. "I think she hopes for what all abused children hope for. Somebody to adopt her, who would love her and treat her like a human being, not a punching bag."

"Look where that hope got _you_," Frost said. "Hard drills and the electro-baton."

The Solo smiled. "And who's to say that was any worse? I never complained."

"Oh, yes, you did. Constantly, when I was first assigned to be your partner."

"That, Frost, is because bitching about inane things that don't actually bother me entertains me. Especially when I'm bitching about them to you. Your reactions are hilarious." She climbed back up the side of the building in which her targets were entrenched, and slipped in through a window, connecting the drug-line of the dart gun to a port in her armor as she did so. "Potassium, please, Frost. Heavy doses. Enough to kill a horse."

"Don't want to overdo it," Frost commented, with more sarcasm than the comment warranted. "Go for it."

Alpha replaced the smile with a determined, focused expression, and sighted through the dart gun's scope for her first target. He would have been an easy kill with a sniper round, or the DMR at her back, but she didn't have a good line on any fleshy parts of his body. She moved until she clung precariously to a heavy structural beam, sighted her target, aimed, and fired. The dart buried itself in his backside, and moments later the man clutched at his chest.

"I would rather not watch this," Frost said. Alpha nodded cautiously in agreement, but kept her eyes locked on the room below. Predictably, the youngest four rogues ran to their leader, then stood around uselessly as two older men toting a medkit caught up. Alpha got the medics next, then the young ones.

"Air must be toxic," the second-ranked rogue deduced. "Keep away from that area."

He was the next to suffer fatal cardiac arrest, and the predicted chaos ensued. Alpha grimaced. It was much harder to get a clear shot with hostages running everywhere. One of the hostages ran for the door, and a few others followed. She found a clear shot to a lower-ranked rogue's buttocks and took it; he fell moments later.

More hostages ran. One of the rogues tried to, and Alpha rewarded him with a dart in the thigh.

"Darts! From up there!" One rogue pointed straight at her.

"Damn it," she muttered, dropping to the floor and switching to her DMR. A quick headshot dropped the one who had seen the dart, and then she leapt upwards, used a wall as a springboard, and landed on another of the rogues. She felt his bones snap under her boots, and reached down to snap his neck.

"Spartan!" another yelled, and suddenly the rogues stopped, turned, and leveled their rifles at Alpha. She moved, uncomfortably aware of the fact that her armor would not protect her for long against eight weapons of any kind, let alone seven battle rifles and an MA5K assault rifle, any one of which was powerful enough to tear through her armor easily. The sooner she dropped these men, the better.

Two more quick headshots, fired mid-leap, felled another two rogues. Someone else's weapon dropped a third. Alpha dashed across the room, firing as she went, and took out two more, one with a shot to the heart and another with a shot through a lung.

The Solo somersaulted over the top of the formation of rogues, assault rifle rounds following her through her arc, and then dodged sideways, letting off another shot from her DMR. It felled the one with the assault rifle. She saw the muzzle flash of a pistol in her peripheral vision, and one of the two remaining rogues crumpled, a neat hole drilled between his eyes.

Alpha brought her DMR to bear on the last target and squeezed the trigger. Her eyes and reflexes were quick enough to register that a couple of milliseconds after her shot was loosed, the first battle rifle round impacted her left kidney. The other two followed before she could react, and then her brain registered the pain. She ignored it, and as she stored her DMR at her back, the familiar sting of biofoam expanded to fill the wound.

The police officer who had helped her moved out of cover to assess the carnage. Alpha noted with mild amusement that the woman was tallish (for a normal human) at around five feet ten inches, and had flaming red hair pulled back into a ponytail. And then nearly died of shock when the cop turned to face her, and she saw an older version of herself in the woman's face.

"Did you _see_ that?" one of the freed hostages asked the cop in amazement. "That Spartan didn't even flinch when that guy shot her!"

Alpha glanced down at herself. Most people were not observant enough to tell the difference between male and female Spartans in armor, and it surprised her that a civilian was one of the few who could. She noticed idly that despite the biofoam, a small amount of blood leaked slowly out of the bullet holes in her armor.

_Focus, Alpha._ She pondered the issue of the civilian a little more deeply. Civvies weren't supposed to know that Spartans existed. Obviously, they did, because it was impossible to hide a half-ton of super-human and armor, but they certainly were not supposed to know enough about Spartans to be able to tell the difference between genders.

"You're a quiet one, huh?" the cop said, more statement than question. "They said they were sending someone to solve the problem, but the last thing anybody expected was one of _you_."

Alpha lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. "Only a Spartan would have been fast enough to neutralize the hostiles quickly enough to ensure the survival of every civilian hostage."

"Well, thanks for coming, anyway. You saved us a hell of a lot of bother. That looks like a kidney, you should come out to one of the ambulances and get it treated."

Alpha checked her vitals in TEAMBIO. She was in no immediate danger of death. There was time to return to her handler and see a proper ONI medic, someone with intimate knowledge of Spartan physiology. "Thank you, but this is nothing."

Another civilian was eyeing her in awe, and then appeared to realize the blood and bullet holes were not decorations. "My God, they can actually _bleed_! That rebel propaganda's bullshit, man, they're as human as you and me."

The man the civvie was talking to shook his head. "Nah, did you _see_ what that one did? No way they're human, blood or no blood. That shit shouldn't be possible."

"And why not? You've seen streetrunners, haven't you? All the same stuff, just a little less altitude."

Streetrunning, Alpha knew, was the latest craze sweeping Carbon City. It involved emulating the kinds of crazy acrobatics Spartans were already legendary for, modified a little to fit in with normal human capabilities, and strung together while running through the streets of a city, using the environment for more height and awe factor. She had seen a streetrunner earlier, during the reconnaissance phase of the mission, who had left her wondering idly what would have happened if some of the most talented streetrunners had been included in the Spartan program. He had achieved height that Alpha had never seen before, at least, not from a normal human.

"Yeah, but that Spartan made it all look so _easy_, and I never saw a streetrunner who didn't look like he was working hard," the naysayer countered.

"I have. This one guy, earlier today. He was incredible, man, I swear he had springs for legs!"

"Well, he's not human either, then."

"Looked pretty human to me!"

Alpha snorted, a temporary loss of control she immediately berated herself for.

"What's funny?" the cop asked her, still hanging around.

"Those two," she said, indicating the two men with a jerk of her head. "They're arguing about whether or not I am human."

"Which one is right?" the cop wondered aloud. Alpha smiled. If not for the frightening similarities between this police officer and herself (so frightening, in fact, that Alpha found herself wondering if this woman might have been her mother, or her aunt), she would have removed her helmet and proven she _was_ human.

"The one insisting the rebels are wrong. But I don't expect you to take my word for it, considering that that is what I would have to say regardless of the facts."

"I always said that rebel propaganda was a pack of lies," the cop commented with a smile. "Wish I could convince my husband, but he's loyal to the UNSC, so does it really matter?"

Alpha shook her head slowly. "Whatever a man's beliefs, he will follow his loyalties most every time."

"I've heard that before, Spartan. What's it from?"

"I don't know. It's something I remember from when I was a child."

The police officer's expression was thoughtful. "You don't sound much more than a child now."

Alpha shrugged. "I'm young, but I'm no child. Excuse me; my superiors will be expecting me back soon."

"Of course, Spartan."

"Oh, and thanks for the assist. I appreciate it." Alpha turned and left, wondering what ONI would throw at her next.


	7. Chapter 6: Teamer

AUTHOR'S NOTE: oh dear, Teamer missions are no easier than Solo missions! As always, reviews are welcome. Halo is not mine, much as I wish it was.

* * *

**26 JANUARY 2528; 1300 HOURS / ASFOUR DELTA, ELDARI, ELFKYND SYSTEM**

The air was thick with pink glass projectiles and bolts of plasma both sizzling blue and blinding green. Ariane kept her head low, holed up behind a rock with the rest of Dusk Team. Amelie whimpered softly as Trip and Adam worked on her ruined armor, trying to separate the chestplate from her skin without ripping the burned skin off completely.

Raven crouched right at the edge, ducking out now and then to fire at the enemy. Her aim with the sniper rifle was consistent and true, despite the circumstances, and the angry set of her shoulders. Nobody spoke to her, and the only member of the team brave enough to be within three feet of her was Johan, who was completely fearless and didn't care what the rest of the team thought regardless.

Amelie was not leading. Ariane wondered if she was even properly conscious. TEAMBIO said she was, and her constant sounds of pain backed the sensors' assessment, but she did not respond to any outside stimulus.

Ariane closed TEAMBIO and pulled up TACMAP. It was decidedly unhelpful. Other than the mass of red that was the enemy forces, there was very little to see. Dusk Team, situated so close together, was a small blob of yellow. A couple of other Spartan teams were also on the map, but _they_ were scattered, and also taking refuge behind whatever cover they could find. Somebody was underground. Ariane checked who, and smiled.

Sadri-103 was, true to form, going it alone underneath enemy lines, assumedly carrying the kind of heavy explosives it would take to rip through such numbers. Sadri was a Solo – Kilo, in fact – and happened to be the only Solo who struggled to separate cover and enforcer. Sadri always preferred to work alone where he could, certain he was more capable on his own and would simply be slowed down by a team.

In fact, everybody knew, by now, that Sadri was a Solo, though only fellow Solos knew which one. It was not spoken of, simply accepted. And damned obvious. The go-it-alone tendencies, plus his superb conduct in battle, and the way he was never beaten in training exercises, all pointed to the one thing.

"I don't know what he's doing," Ariane said, "but Sadri's obviously got a plan. I doubt he's even told his team leader what he's doing."

"Knowing Sadri, probably not," Adam agreed. "But, also knowing Sadri, it's probably a good one."

"No doubt, but risky." Ariane edged towards the side of the rock not occupied by Raven and ducked out of cover for an instant, raining sniper slugs on the enemy. She didn't have time to watch the enemies fall, and had no idea whether her shots had even hit their marks. Clip empty, she took cover behind the rock again and reloaded.

"Five down," Raven told her. "Nice. Looks like you got a Zealot Elite, two of his cronies, and then two Jackals with one shot."

"Two _Jackals_?" Ariane was surprised. "No energy shields?"

"They have strange ones that only cover their forearms. Sort of look like their purpose is close-range skirmishing."

"Well, to differentiate, let's call them Skirmishers," Trip suggested, in his logical way that nobody could argue with.

"Makes sense," Adam agreed. He primed a grenade as he worked on Amelie's armor, and lobbed it over the rock without turning to face the enemy. Ariane heard the distinctive sounds of Jackals and Grunts panicking and leaping away from it, and then the almost-funny screams as it exploded and a good number of Grunts died.

"Good one, Adam," Raven said. "You got the one that hit Amelie." Her shoulders relaxed, just a little, and everyone relaxed a little accordingly. Raven's mood set the scene for the whole team, except Johan, partly because she was dangerous when she was angry.

A plasma grenade rolled into reach. Ariane grabbed it and primed it, then leaned out of cover and hurled it at an Elite whose gold armor indicated he was high-ranking, and, accordingly, tough. It stuck to his shoulder. Ariane took cover again, narrowly avoiding an overcharged bolt from a plasma pistol, and smiled in satisfaction when the grenade exploded, close enough that the shockwave from the blast thumped through the rock and the Spartans behind it.

Screeching filled the air, a sound as horribly familiar as it was haunting.

"Banshees!" Trip yelled, forgetting about Amelie for the moment and hefting a rocket launcher. Adam did the same. Ariane opted for the Spartan Laser that Amelie had been carrying; Raven did not seem to notice, and kept on firing at the enemy infantry.

The ground nearby exploded in a radioactive mess of fuel rod and plasma that bounced off Ariane's armor, leaving little blackened pocks against the reflective surface. Three Marines were vaporized – there one second, simply _gone_ the next.

"Yep," Adam said casually, "we're dead. Let's take the bastards to Hell with us!"

Trip grunted an affirmative and let off a rocket. It missed by mere inches, because the Banshee's pilot sent it into a barrel roll. Adam's backup hit home, and the Banshee exploded, its wreckage plowing into the Covenant line.

Ariane charged her weapon and had to lean backwards to get her shot as her target passed above her. The recoil from the chemical laser made her overbalance and, in a rare clumsy moment, fall flat on her back in the mud. She was back on her feet in less than half a second, and charging the laser again, keeping it aimed carefully at a Banshee as it approached, screaming above the UNSC troops and firing, not only its fuel rod cannon, but its plasma repeaters as well.

The laser gun kicked hard against her shoulder, and the beam melted a big hole right through the middle of the Banshee, which kept careering towards Dusk Team, but was now falling. Ariane grabbed Trip and yanked him into a low crouch up against the rock, but the gesture was unnecessary. The Banshee clipped the top of the rock, tumbled, and then crushed what sounded like an especially large Elite.

"Everybody down!" Sadri shouted over the comms. Ariane heard him panting and assumed he was sprinting away from something, probably the massive explosive charge he had most likely planted beneath the bulk of the Covenant troops. Dusk Team hit the deck. Ariane watched as a large portion of the rest of the UNSC troops did the same, and was tempted to berate the few who were stupid enough to ignore a Spartan's words, but there wasn't enough time.

The ground shook and nearly three seconds later, a heavy shockwave blasted the few surviving trees flat. The Marines stupid enough to still be standing were thrown like ragdolls away from what was left of the Covenant forces.

Blue and purple blood, bits of gore, and a whole lot of dirt rained down as Ariane led Dusk Team out of cover, taking advantage of the confusion to mop up the strays. Ariane's Spartan Laser cut down enemies in three long lines, and then ran out of charge. She threw it aside and, instead of reaching over her shoulder for her sniper rifle, grabbed a dead Elite's energy sword, activating it as soon as her fingers were curled around the handgrip and sprinting for the most cohesive cluster of Covenant troops.

Adam watched her in his peripheral vision, time moving so slowly that he vaguely took notice of the brief gaps between each bullet leaving his assault rifle, and a small part of his mind calculated exactly how long each short period of relative calm lasted. He fired at the enemy, and watched and took direction from the acting team leader, but his mind was elsewhere.

"Sadri – SADRI! Respond!" he bellowed into his comm mike, then controlled himself and restored his own professionalism. "Sierra one-oh-three, do you copy?"

Raven came up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder, without pausing in her rate of fire. It was impressive, Adam thought, how she could shoot so quickly and so accurately from a sniper rifle, with only one hand on her gun. "Adam, I think he's gone. I don't know – he doesn't show up on our TEAMBIO anyway – but that blast…"

"He can't be," Adam denied, pulling away from Raven and putting a fist through a Spec-Ops Elite's skull as it tried to sneak up behind the Spartans. "Spartans never die." He clung to the lie that ONI had spread and the Spartans perpetuated, using it to keep himself together enough to fight.

"If only that were true," Raven noted sadly as an alarm sounded in both their helmets, informing them that Amelie's vitals were in the red and dropping. "Someone should go back to Amelie."

"I'll go," Adam volunteered. "I don't know how much use I would be in this battle anyway. You know Sadri was my friend."

Raven watched him as he turned back to the rock and sprinted to be near their leader. To defend what would be her body, soon enough. The sniper sighed and turned her attention back to the fight, then froze.

"…this is Sadri one-oh-three," Sadri's voice said in her ear. He coughed. "Status orange."

Ariane cut a Jackal in half with her energy sword, listening in on the comm chatter. The comms exploded into chaos at Sadri's declaration, and she muttered a string of expletives under her breath, cutting through more enemy troops as she waited for a moment of relative calm.

Eventually, it came. "SILENCE!" she bellowed, aware that, with Amelie dying, she was now the leader of a Spartan team, and therefore held a position of authority on this battlefield. The silence she demanded came. "All right. Dusk Three, on me. Four and Five, find Sadri. Six, stay with Amelie. Spartan teams, form up on the right flank. Snap Frost will transfer co-ordinates for a nav marker. Marines, Helljumpers, give these bastards a taste of Hell!"

Technically, she was not the ranking officer on this battlefield – she was only a Chief Petty Officer, promoted last year for her exceptional conduct – but she was a Spartan, and she spoke with the most authority anybody had heard since the battle had turned desperate. When Ariane spoke, the soldiers listened. Acknowledgement lights blinked green in her HUD – the Spartans acknowledging and accepting her orders – and the Marines clicked their comms. The Helljumpers ignored her, but that was familiar and a welcome distraction from the chaos.

"You know," Frost said to her, "this will earn you either another promotion, or a reprimand."

"Oh, I know," she replied with a smile, as Trip battled his way towards her through a pocket of Covenant resistance. "You know, for all that Sadri's bomb killed, there still are a hell of a lot of Covies here."

"Still outnumbered," Frost agreed sourly. "Watch the suicide squad over there."

Ariane swore and scooped up a pistol from the ground, firing at the Grunts that ran at her, their arms in the air, stubby little hands curled around glowing blue plasma grenades.

Amelie's vitals flatlined, and a moment later her dot disappeared from TACMAP. Adam swore violently on the comms, and then paused, and asked for orders.

"Catch up with Four and Five," Ariane told him. "There'll be a lot of rock and rubble to dig through before they can get Sadri out of there, and they'll appreciate the help."

Adam's acknowledgement light winked amber, and then green. He would do it, but he was not happy about it. She sighed, thinking that he would complain no matter what order she gave him right then. As his form streaked away from the rock, an explosion bloomed behind it, obliterating Amelie's body. Ariane sighed and moved the dead Spartan's name over to the MIA list.

"Is this just for revenge, or do you have some greater purpose in mind?" Trip asked her as he reached her position and paused beside her.

"Both," she growled, throwing the now-empty pistol aside. She put her left fist through an Elite's breastplate and deep into its chest, letting Amelie's loss anger her, and using the anger to increase her strength. As she was pulling it out, she grabbed the smashed edge of the Elite's armor, and threw it into another, hard enough that she heard the satisfying crack as the second Elite's spine snapped. "Raven, Johan and Adam will need us to help them out sooner rather than later, but I will not remove our team from the battle entirely."

Trip nodded in approval of her use of the word 'our'. Amelie had always said 'my team', which implied ownership. "I assume you have a plan for this battle that requires our… particular talents."

"I do indeed. I needed another Spartan who can work alone as effectively as in a team. Sadri would have been my first choice, but only because him going it alone would raise no eyebrows, no questions."

"I'm all ears."

Ariane found that phrase amusing. All ears, _really_? What about arms, and legs, and brain, and other important body parts? "I need your brain for this one, too, Trip," she joked with false levity. "This will be a think-on-the-fly type of plan. We still have an objective. The original plan going FUBAR doesn't change that."

"I like that. FUBAR. It describes the situation pretty accurately, don't you think? So we still have to break in to the Covenant supercarrier and steal whatever the hell it is Amsterdam wanted us to steal."

"Exactly. I know exactly how I'm going to get the team _into_ the supercarrier, but things get tricky from there. Behind enemy lines, in a slipspace-capable _enemy_ ship that's crawling with the bastards… it's not going to be easy. Getting out will be next to near impossible, even for us."

"That was always up to us, though."

"Yeah, but Amelie had the plan for that, and she never told any of us. Frost is trying to hack into her personal holoport, but it's slow going. Amelie was a damn good programmer, and she knew exactly what AIs are capable of. Her holoport's systems are specifically designed to keep AIs out."

"Meaning we have to see what's up there and plan for ourselves when the time comes." Trip whirled and leapt onto an Elite's shoulders, forcing it to the ground, then planted one foot on its back, between its shoulders, and pulled its head upwards with all his strength. The head was ripped from the body, and purple blood spilled out in shocking quantities.

"Planning on the fly has always been a Spartan specialty," Ariane said, "but I don't think we've been sent into a situation _this_ bad before." She dropped the now-depleted energy sword and picked up a pair of plasma rifles, firing them both into a large Zealot Elite. They overheated just after the Zealot's shields went down, and she dashed in close, dodging a plasma grenade. The Zealot spun and aimed a powerful roundhouse kick at her, which she ducked underneath, grabbing his other leg and yanking it from underneath him. He fell with a roar of fury, and Trip shot him in the face with a shotgun.

"Where did you get _that_ from?" Ariane asked him, surprised.

"Dead Marine. No idea how he got this far through enemy lines, or why, but I don't really care. I have his gun." Trip allowed himself to enjoy the satisfying boom of the shotgun as he downed an Elite's shields with one shell, and then ripped through the bastard's body with a second. Deft fingers reloaded the weapon in less time than it would have taken to pick up a new one.

Johan's acknowledgement light suddenly burned a bright, alarming red. Ariane gestured at Trip to follow, and then changed direction and sprinted for his position. "What is it?"

"We're pinned down, taking heavy fire. Request reinforcements immediately!"

"On my way. Dawn Team, break off to Rally Point Charlie and assist."

"Sir," Dawn Leader acknowledged. "Ah, sir, we gotta snag."

Ariane felt her heart stop, and then kick back into action at double speed. "What is it?"

"Never seen this before, but we got _eight_ half-size Hunters, all with full-size assault cannons. They already got Dawn Five and Dawn Six is in trouble."

"Disengage, Spartan," Ariane ordered. "There are other teams who are also more than capable of taking care of Hunters. Even eight of them."

"Negative, sir, no can do! The other teams are all but buried, and these Hunters will demolish the Marines if they get through our line."

Ariane shrugged. She had no _real_ authority over the Spartan teams here, despite the fact that she outranked all of them. She was no John, not even close, and he was the only one they considered worthy of leading them. Besides, John would probably have left them be. "Do what you have to, Dawn Leader."

"Thank you."

Trip leapt over the wreckage of a Warthog, snatching some ammunition off one of its dead passengers, and flicked his acknowledgement light green. "I have eyes on. We've flanked them."

"Let's do this," Ariane said, opting for her sniper rifle. "Go on ahead. I'll cover you."

"On it." Trip sprinted for the enemies ahead, firing from his assault rifle as he ran.

Ariane dropped into a crouch and held her breath to steady her aim. She fired, and her body instinctively absorbed the recoil. Four Grunts and an Elite fell, the trail from the sniper round still visible in the air. She fired again, and again, not even pausing to watch her targets fall before she lined up the next shot.

"Here comes the cavalry," Raven commented over the comms, and soon the air around the enemy was crisscrossed with the gas trails from sniper rounds and the battle was punctuated often by the loud _crack_ of the sniper rifles. "Ah, boss, Adam's…"

"I know, Raven. I'm watching him, and he won't be allowed to do anything stupid."

"Dibs on the last one!" Johan called as the Covenant force dwindled. Ariane smiled to herself when there were two left, and in the way they so often did, Ariane and Raven picked two separate targets, and fired at exactly the same time.

"Well damn," Raven said, "looks like there _was_ no last one."

Johan shrugged one shoulder, already digging through rubble. Ariane sprinted forward and joined them, listening to the sounds of battle behind her. It was going well – more of the pop-pop-pop of UNSC weapons drifted across the distance than the distinctive sounds of each Covenant weapon – although she could still hear the sound of Hunter assault cannons discharging now and then.

"Sierra one-oh-three," Ariane said, "report."

"Status orange," Sadri coughed. Ariane frowned. He sounded weaker than he had immediately after the explosion.

"Pick up the pace," she told her team, hooking her fingers under the edge of a large slab. She heaved upwards; it took all her strength to lift the rock, but lift it she did, and Trip and Johan joined her as she shoved the edge as high as she could, and then started moving closer to the far edge, beneath the slab. Together, they flipped it over, revealing a tunnel. Ruined, but cavernous, the tunnel bore the same markings on the walls as some of the deepest tunnels in Castle Base, back on Reach. Tunnels that nobody but the Spartans dared explore.

It was dark in the tunnel, but that did not deter Ariane, who jumped down, landing silent and catlike in the heavy blackness. She could not see, so instead of waiting for her eyes to adjust, she switched on her night vision, and, as always, closed her eyes for the instant that her HUD flashed bright, blinding green.

She opened them to see Sadri leaning against a wall, helmet off, grinning at her. He laughed. "Ha, boom! That was the best one yet, don't you agree?"

Ariane shook her head slowly, with a resigned sigh. "Sadri. Report to the forward supply base for medical attention."

"Aw, come on, I must've taken out three quarters of the bastards."

"We appreciate your efforts, Sadri, as always, but you're injured." She checked TACMAP, selected Sadri's dot, and examined his vitals. "Badly. You need urgent medical care."

Sadri looked down at himself in surprise. "Do I?"

"Yes. Now go, no more protest!"

Sadri shrugged and did as he was ordered, still sniggering about the explosion he had brought about. Ariane outranked him, in _both_ his identities, and who was he to argue? But that was an _excellent_ boom, and it satisfied him on a very childish level. He noticed the pain, vaguely, but didn't care.

Ariane watched as Sadri climbed up the rubble and out of the tunnel, shaking her head. He was certainly unique, she thought, casting about for his helmet.

"Ah, Ariane?" Trip asked her over the comm. "Were you planning on making it onto that supercarrier today?"

"I have to find the pyromaniac's helmet," she replied, trying not to laugh. "What is it with him and explosives?"

"I can honestly say I have no idea. Far as I can remember, he's always been like that."

"One of these days someone will have to restrict his access to anything that goes boom," Raven commented. "Sadri is the only Spartan I can confidently say will most likely _not_ fall to an enemy weapon, but only because he's more likely to die because he set off an explosion that was too big, on a fuse that was too short."

"Sadly, that's true," Johan agreed, sounding like he wished there was some way he could argue with Raven's point. It was an ever-present part of the team dynamic. Johan went out of his way to irritate Raven, mostly by disagreeing with everything she said.

"Johan," Adam said, "you actually agree with Raven on something? Are you feeling all right?"

Johan snorted. "That Sadri's an idiot? Of course I agree with Raven about _that_."

"Enough," Ariane cut in. "Sadri is just as capable as anyone. So what if he has a weakness for explosives? I seem to recall Johan shares it."

"Shut up," was Johan's eloquent retort. The set of his shoulders indicated embarrassment, and Ariane was distinctly reminded of a scolded child. It was the first child-like thing she had ever seen Johan do, even at the very beginning when they had all been between five and seven years old. His unshakable maturity had bothered her back then, and though it had since ceased making her nervous, she still kept a sharp eye on him. Nobody knew much about his childhood, but it had evidently been unpleasant.

"Eyes up, Spartans," she said, an order that reminded them to be professional at the same time as it prepared them for their orders. "That supercarrier above us is our target. You all remember the mission brief. This SNAFU has changed nothing. We still have a priority objective."

"How are we going to get up _there?_" Raven wondered.

"Here's the plan. The Covenant are deploying their troops via a gravity lift. That would be the obvious entry point. We're not taking it."

A silent mutter ran through the team, as everybody shifted, taking in her words. Trip shifted all his weight to his right leg, a clear indication he disapproved. "That only leaves incredibly risky options that may or may not work."

"The Covenant will not be expecting us to fly in on one of their birds. We are going to capture an enemy dropship. We are going to fly it _close to_ the supercarrier. And then we are going to abandon it once we are within the supercarrier's shields and sneak in through the entrance on the top."

Johan looked up again. "Sounds simple enough."

"Problems – capturing the dropship. Ensuring they don't figure it out before we get there. And then remaining undetected on a Covenant supercarrier crawling with enemies, stealing the object, overloading the slipspace drive, and getting the hell out of there. Throw it at me, team."

"Capturing the dropship will be the easy part," Raven said. "We'll need to send our fastest Spartan – that's me – to kill the pilot before they can take off. The rest of us will have to kill the Covies in the transport bays."

Trip twitched his right hand, a subtle demand for attention. "Frost and Liara can help keep up the pretense. With Frost's hacking skills and Liara's translation skills, they'll be unbeatable working together. The Covenant will never suspect a thing."

Everybody looked at Adam. He shrugged. "I have nothing. Remaining undetected with _that many_ enemies all hunting us will be incredibly difficult, if not entirely impossible, unless we can steal some Covie active camo systems and somehow integrate them into our armor. _Finding_ the av-cam tech we need will be difficult."

"It's a good plan, Adam," Ariane said. "So – new problem, finding av-cam tech to steal. Solvable?"

"Kill some Spec-Ops Elites without overloading their av-cam first," Johan suggested. "Do we have the time to integrate it?"

"That will be simple, if you follow our directions," Liara said, using Trip's comms to address the team. "Snap Frost and myself have studied Covenant technology in depth, and have devised theoretical methods by which certain aspects may be integrated into UNSC systems with little or no modifications."

The team fell silent for a few seconds. The brief silence felt as if it stretched an eternity. Ariane eyed the supercarrier, noting with interest that her bionic eye automatically calculated entry points and potential threat.

"Stealing the object is part of remaining undetected," Johan finally said. "But overloading the slipspace drive? Do we even know where that is?"

"We'll find it," Ariane said confidently. "Overloading it should not be difficult, from what little we know about Covenant slipspace tech. That part is a side mission from ONI, as you all recall, and they are more interested in destroying this supercarrier than clipping its wings. Capturing it essentially intact would be, no doubt, rewarded, but is at this point impossible with the force we have available to us."

"Not _that_ hard to take over the bridge, lock the doors, and vent atmosphere from the rest of the ship," Johan disagreed. "Then only the Grunts would be left, and it's not like we can't handle a few Grunts."

"A few," Ariane said, "but not a few hundred thousand. This is a situation in which we have good Intel indicating that the numbers are simply overwhelming. Besides, it would be a nice big explosion."

Johan murmured his approval and found a fuel rod gun in the rubble. He shook some of the dirt off it and brushed soot off the side. "Fully loaded. _Score_."

"The biggest challenge I can see is getting _off_ the supercarrier," Raven said. "They'll know we're there, by then. Thoughts?"

"I can't see how we can really plan for it, considering that although our intelligence is reliable for numbers, and where the object will be, I have nothing on escape pods, or dropships, or other means of getting off the supercarrier," Ariane rolled her shoulders, indicating a clear 'I don't know'. "We need to be able to plan on the fly for this one, because I really have no idea what will happen once we are on board."

"We'll most likely lose more Spartans," Trip said. "If any of you is uncomfortable with the risk, you are welcome to stay behind. We only _really_ need one of us to make the slipspace drive."

What was left unsaid, as always, meant a lot more than what _was_ said. Nobody had to make it out alive, and there was a strong chance nobody would. Ariane watched the team, looking for any clues in their body language that might point towards reluctance. There were none – in fact, Johan looked _eager_.

"We're coming," said Adam. "Didn't think you could split up the dream team that easy, did you, Trip?"

"Doesn't bother us that we don't have an escape clause planned," Johan added. "Seems pretty standard, to me. Run headlong into Hell, not knowing whether we'll get out when the job's done, and not really caring anyway. Same old, same old."

"Well said," Raven agreed.


	8. Chapter 7: Impossible

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: sorry, longer time in the making for this one than usual. And, again, a stupid number of words! I intended more action for this chapter, but things work out in strange ways. We get to know Raven a little better, see Kilo in action, and if I recall correctly, we even see a snippet of Adam's point of view. This Teamer stuff is fun! Unfortunately, there's only a little more of it before we go back to the Solo... and things start to get interesting for Alpha, Charlie, Kilo, and one other Solo I haven't introduced yet.**

* * *

**26 JANUARY 2528; 2100 HOURS / ASFOUR DELTA, ELDARI, ELFKYND SYSTEM**

Raven's night vision highlighted the edges of the otherwise invisible form of a Spec-Ops Elite. Cautiously, she crept closer, inching towards her target. Even as the other Spartans of Dusk Team took down their targets and advertised their triumphs with familiar jibes, she was silent, stalking her prey.

There was a reason, she reflected, that Marines liked to call her Panther. Her catlike reflexes, her actual name, and her dark skin and hair were enough. Once they had figured out she was hyperlethal as well, the nickname had stuck. To other Spartans, she was still Raven, but she liked the callsign the Marines had given her. It fit a hell of a lot better than 'Raven'. They were noisy birds, and the only things she had in common with them were name and color.

Even her eyes were panther-like. Right then, they were locked onto the faint green outline of her enemy, outline and eyes matched in shade. Genetically, her eyes were originally black, like the rest of her, but they had changed when she was augmented.

Caution stayed her feet for but a moment and she dropped lower in her crouch. The Elite she stalked glanced back, and paused as well, staring straight at her. Raven stayed completely still, praying to whatever God was out there that the darkness was enough to hide her. Eldari at night was pitch black, barely enough light for night vision systems to work effectively. She stood with her muscles locked in place, heart pounding in her chest, for what felt like an eternity.

Finally, the Elite made a gesture that was oddly similar to a human shrug, then turned and resumed its patrol. Raven flashed forwards, drawing her combat knife as she moved, and jumped onto its shoulders. Before the Elite could raise the alarm, she plunged her knife deep into each of its eyes and jumped off, dragging the dead alien back towards cover before it had even hit the ground.

The others were already back at the arranged meeting point, discussing their various methods and arguing flippantly about the merits and drawbacks of each. Raven dragged her victim into the circle and dumped it almost on Johan's lap.

"And _I_ wasn't seen," she said, folding herself into a seated position. Legs crossed, she leaned forward, and started prying armor plates off the Elite, using her knife as a lever. It only had one sharp edge, so that exercise was less risky than it sounded.

"I still say my way was better," Johan retorted. "I killed mine sooner."

"And damn near gave us away," Raven shot back. "If you weren't such a waste of space when it comes to stealth, yours would not have had the chance to broadcast its alarm to the rest of them, and mine would have been less vigilant, meaning I would have been able to make my kill more quickly."

"And if you weren't so insistent on not using a silencer, you could've just shot the bastard."

Raven had to admit he had a point. Those who had sniped their targets had used silenced sniper rifles – that was Ariane and Trip – but Raven refused to use a silencer. Silence, to Raven, meant sneaking around and stabbing people. "Silencers screw up my aim, and throw off the balance of my rifle. No, thanks. I'd rather use a knife."

"Never knew anybody else who preferred to get up close and personal to a Covie bastard," Johan muttered, getting up and dragging his Elite a short distance to work under the shadow of a rock.

"He's right, you know," Adam said. An ear-splitting _crack_ was followed by the sound of twisting, tearing metal as he wrenched the chestplate off his Elite. "Only you would choose to sneak around trying to get close enough to your target to stab him over taking him out nice and quiet with a silenced sniper rifle."

"I don't like silencers. At all. Meaning if silence is required, I will choose the knife every time. You guys should know that by now. Besides, the knife is a lot more silent than the _whump_ of a silenced rifle. And the bullet's supersonic, so it's hardly silent regardless. Sonic boom." Raven worked at the chestplate of her Elite, removing it more carefully – and with a lot less noise – than her team-mate.

"Quiet," Trip said. "Something's coming."

Raven paused, listening. Sure enough, a twig snapped somewhere to her left. Presently, she was on her feet, reaching for her knife again. "Adam, you idiot, we're supposed to be being _quiet_. Now they know where we are!"

"Wait," Ariane cautioned them, right hand raised.

"Hold your fire," a calm voice came over the comms. "Friendlies approaching."

"Prove it," Raven shot back. "Covies might not speak our language very well, but there _are_ still rebels."

The voice sighed. "_Oly oly oxen free._ Mean anything to you?"

"Welcome home, Spartan," Trip said, moving forwards to stand at the front of the Dusk Team formation, and then pausing. This was the way Amelie had done things. He was not sure if Ariane wanted to continue the same procedures.

Ariane moved to stand next to and behind him, where the second-in-command stood in standard formations, and bumped his hand with hers as she turned to face the incoming ally. Trip knew this was no accident, though it would appear such to a non-Spartan.

The rest of the team fell into their usual positions, and then all five Spartans froze when the friendlies came into sight.

It was another _five_ Spartans. One was limping badly and her armor was all but destroyed, but she refused to be helped. The rest stood tall and perfect, but their armor was as battered as Dusk Team's, and one of them was missing his helmet. Ariane recognized him immediately, from his platinum blond hair and dark grey eyes – Jasper, the leader of the Spartan team standing in tight formation in front of her. They weren't supposed to be here. Officially, Midnight was missing, after the ship they were assigned to went down.

"Where's your Six?" Jasper wondered aloud.

"He's here," Trip said, tilting his head towards Adam. "We lost our leader. Where's _yours_?"

"Right behind me. Ellen. We lost our Four last year, when we crash-landed on Eldari. Damn near lost Ellen in the fighting today. Someone needs to do something about that supercarrier. Until that's gone, we don't stand a chance."

"That's our mission," Raven cut in. "We're going to cause them all sorts of grief."

Ellen coughed out a laugh. "That's what I like to hear. We saw Dawn and Amber from the mesa, by the way. Dawn's down two, Amber's thus far intact."

Trip nodded. "We know. We are in charge of the Spartan teams deployed here."

Jasper grinned, a smile that spoke of mischief. "Need a hand showing the Covies who's boss? Three teams isn't much against a supercarrier."

"One team," Adam corrected quietly. "Three whole teams is too much to risk. That's a lot of Spartans."

"Considering we're already technically considered lost, it's no risk at all for you to take us with you," the calm voice from before cut in, coming from the bulky Spartan to Jasper's left. Ariane recognized him as Craig, and was surprised how much his voice had changed. "If only one of your teams is going up there, then why are all three deployed here?"

"Fire support," Ariane said. "We expected some resistance. Dawn and Amber teams were assigned with the task of covering us until we could get on board the supercarrier, and then assisting with Eldari's defense."

"And then things changed for the worse," Jasper said. "No surprises there."

Craig spotted one of the dead Elites and raised one shoulder to indicate a raised eyebrow. "What are you doing with them?"

"Stealing their av-cam tech. Maybe their energy shields, if we're lucky, but the camo is the important part," Adam explained. "_If_ we let you come with us, you'll need it too."

Ellen scoffed at that. "Midnight Team, _need_ av-cam? Not in this universe!"

"In a well-lit Covenant supercarrier crawling with enemy troops?" Adam asked her.

"Well… maybe it might be useful, but we could stay hidden," Ellen insisted, glancing at Jasper. "We've been working against the local Insurrection while we've been stuck here, and nobody knows. Not even the Innies."

Jasper nodded, grinning wickedly. "All they know is that their supplies never arrive on time, if they arrive at all, and sentries keep turning up with bullets in their brains."

"Innies aren't even in the same _league_ as the Covenant," Ariane reminded him. "Okay, so Grunts are stupid and undisciplined at the best of times, but have you ever tried to sneak through a Jackal's line of sight without being seen? Not even Raven can do _that_."

Raven _humph_ed and went back to work on the Elite she had killed, dismantling its armor and setting each piece in a very specific order. It looked like utter chaos, but she had a system, which she kept to. If anybody so much as breathed the wrong way near her setup, they would be sorry. Ariane watched a safe distance away, listening to the conversation carefully for any signs of danger. Midnight Team might have been Spartans, but that did not automatically make them allies. Ariane knew better than anybody that assuming they _were_ was dangerous.

"What is it?" Trip's voice came through a comm channel Ariane knew to be available only to Solos. Good – that meant her concerns would not be overheard.

"I'm not sure," she began cautiously, "but experience tells me to be wary. None of us expected Joey to go bad, and look what happened. Amelie was on the brink, as far as I could tell, but she could have snapped in five minutes or five decades. Who's to say Jasper and his team haven't been corrupted by their time working entirely outside the command structure? Something about his eyes is bothering me."

"Something about his eyes has _always_ bothered you," Trip reminded her. Despite his carefully controlled voice, Ariane heard the faintest hint of concern. Her own suspicion rubbing off on him, possibly, but it was also more than possible that he might have been thinking along the same lines.

"Not this much. Something is definitely off. There's something… manic about them. They're too inconsistent, his focus keeps on changing."

"That may not be a bad thing," Trip said, his voice eerily calm. "He is the team leader, yes? He may simply be keeping watch."

Ariane knew he was playing the devil's advocate. He did this often, when she got a bad feeling about whatever, to ensure she was not simply being paranoid. Sometimes, his words settled her nerves. Not this time. "Perhaps. I still say we keep an eye on him. Take the team aside, one by one, and warn them privately to be wary. Make sure nobody on Midnight Team overhears."

Trip glanced at her, a gesture that would be construed as casual by anybody else. Ariane knew it was a message – calm down, you're being paranoid. "Is it really necessary?"

"I don't know, Trip," Ariane admitted, "but I have this awful sense of foreboding. That is not something I can ignore. I can make it an order, if I have to."

"I'll humor you. This time. Nobody else is acting like they have the same feeling, Ariane. Look at them – they've integrated Midnight straight back into the Spartan dynamic like they were never gone." Trip raised one shoulder infinitesimally, the tiniest suggestion of a shrug.

"I know, I know. I've been wrong before. I've also been _right_ before. Do you really want to take that risk?"

"When you put it that way, perhaps not."

"And," Ariane added, "I can tell you're not so sure, yourself. It's so obvious in the set of your shoulders, and the way you won't turn your back to any of them, or let them get behind you."

"Is it _really_ that obvious?"

"Only to me. You're not slipping in your standards, Trip. I've always been able to read you."

"Like an open book," Trip agreed, laughing. It was a very convincing, but very _false_ laugh. Ariane went back to work on her Elite, watching him in her peripheral vision. Trip was not the only Spartan she watched as she worked, and certainly not the one she watched the most carefully.

Adam whistled cheerfully as he worked, treating and dressing Ellen's wounds. He was always happiest when the opportunity presented itself for him to employ his skill as a field medic. It was not so much that he enjoyed his comrades being injured – that part sucked – as it was that he was made for healing and helping. All the killing, while it had ceased to bother him, was not something he could bring himself to enjoy. Practicing medicine, as rudimentary as field medicine was, felt as essential as breathing.

"You love this," Ellen observed, watching as his skilled fingers plucked unexploded shards of Needler rounds out of the wound in her thigh.

"Mm," he agreed. "I was born for medicine. I remember saying I would be a doctor when I grew up, when I was about four years old."

"Bet you never imagined your dream would come true like _this_."

He laughed at that, a good belly laugh, though his hands stayed as utterly steady as if he was holding his breath. "I have to admit it's been a surprise. Brace yourself, this is going to hurt. A lot."

Ellen sucked a breath in through already-clenched teeth. Adam took that as a sign she was ready, and closed his tweezers around a piece of shrapnel that was partially embedded in her femur. It was quite clearly from a UNSC frag grenade, though he figured it was probably an injury obtained from Midnight Team's conflict with the local Insurrection. The rebels stole a lot of military gear.

Adam braced his free hand against the soil and used it to help him pull the fragment out of the bone. It was a difficult task, even for him, because Ellen's bones were the super-dense, super-strong bones of a Spartan, so the damage fit tightly around the shrapnel that had done it. He shut his ears to Ellen's grunt of agony, the only sign of the scream he knew she had drowned, and wrenched the piece of metal from her bone.

"There. Sorry about that. I would have liked to have removed this with you under an anesthetic, but we have to make do with what we have, and that's one thing we most certainly _don't_ have."

"Ugh," Ellen said through her teeth. She unlocked them, though it clearly took effort, and sighed. "Thank you for warning me. Too many other medics wouldn't bother. Let's see."

Adam was unsure whether that was a good idea or not, but he obliged, dropping the shrapnel into her outstretched palm. "It's nothing much. If your femur hadn't been in the way, it wouldn't have been any more than a flesh wound."

"I honestly didn't notice it. How deep?"

"Ahh, I'm not sure, about a quarter-inch into the bone? You need to be more careful around frag grenades."

"When I'm healed," Ellen said playfully, "I am going to murder Craig. Him and his damn explosives. He's the one who insisted we should try to lift a crate of 'nades from the Innies last time we raided them."

Adam started. "How long have you been walking around with metal in your leg?"

"Half my life, silly, remember the time I fell from the top of the climbing rope? Jasper forgot he was supposed to keep me from hitting the ground, I guess, and I ended up with a pin in my tibia. This particular piece of metal? Only since the fighting broke out, I guess. The Innie 'nade crate we stole was set off by the plasma from a plasma 'nade. We're lucky we saw them coming and put the crate on the ground, or I'd be well and truly dead. I honestly didn't even notice I was hurt until that goddamned Grunt got me with its Needler."

"After that, it was all over Red Rover," Adam surmised. "Considering all the plasma damage to your armor, I'm shocked all you've got is this wound and a few burns. I watched Amelie die with her armor more-or-less intact."

"I hope you have enough spare parts to fix all this," Ellen said with a mischievous grin that Adam saw half of through her smashed visor.

"If someone can talk Raven around, I'll eat my helmet," he said, also grinning, though Ellen couldn't see. "Unfortunately, she's our field maintenance expert. Ariane or Trip could do a passable job of making it fully functional again, but Raven can make it as good as new."

"Raven doesn't like us. Why?"

"Ah, Ellen. So naïve. Raven doesn't like anybody, not at the best of times, and somebody went and killed her best friend today, so this is most certainly _not_ the best of times." Adam glanced uneasily at the Spartan he spoke of. "Be careful around her. Don't walk on eggshells, that'll offend her, but be careful. Raven doesn't forgive easily, and her mind works in… interesting ways. No doubt she's somehow connected your reappearance with Amelie's death."

"Just what we needed," Jasper said. Adam started again. He hadn't heard the other Spartan approach.

"Trust me, I'm not happy about it either," Adam said with a sigh. "She can be dangerous, so we all like to keep our distance when she's in a mood. Well, all of us except Johan, but that's because Johan can take her down if he has to."

"So, simply put, don't get within three feet unless you absolutely have to?" Jasper was clearly dubious.

"Six, if you can manage it without offending her, but yes, that's the general idea." Adam glanced at Raven again, then shook his head as if to clear it.

Jasper folded himself to the ground with an easy grace that surprised Adam. It was more than the typical Spartan ease of movement. There was a smoothness about him, about everything he did or said, that reminded Adam of a dancer. A super-strong, super-agile dancer with a gift for public speaking. Adam raised an eyebrow at his own mental voice and wondered exactly where the comparison had come from.

With surprise, he realized that Ellen was stitching her own wound. With even more surprise, he registered that her face lacked any sign of pain. Not even a subtle tightening of the corners of her eyes. Adam frowned. A Spartan's discipline was immense, but not _that_ strong.

"Doesn't that hurt?" he wondered.

"Not at all," Ellen said serenely.

Jasper shrugged. "She's always had a strange perception of pain. You know, when I dropped her off that rope all those years ago, I don't think she even noticed her broken leg. Not until a week later. Nobody has ever had to give her painkillers."

"They don't work on me," Ellen justified. Adam was beginning to understand that her logic was as skewed as her pain threshold.

"Well, as a fully trained, fully qualified medical officer, I can tell you right now that even if Midnight Team assists Dusk with this mission, you will not be," he said. "Your injuries require some down-time, even if you don't feel the pain. You will heal better, and more quickly, if you rest."

"That's all right, I don't like stealth anyway." Ellen smiled. Adam raised an eyebrow, wondering where the team spirit on this team had gone. He knew that Johan hated stealth work, but he also knew that Johan would throw a fit if somebody tried to make him stay behind.

"That's our Ellen," Jasper said fondly. It occurred to Adam that he spoke like a father speaking of his daughter, and again he found himself wondering about the strange dynamic of Midnight Team. This was something completely foreign to him. He was curious, and it was a curiosity that raged within him, burning away any whim to investigate anything else.

"Jasper," he said softly, "would you mind explaining to me your team dynamic?"

* * *

Trip leaned back against the rock and closed his eyes, fatigued not by the events of the day, but by the prospect of helping Ariane manage the inevitable arguments. Raven versus Johan was the big one – those two were always at each other's throats over something – but he sensed something simmering between Adam and Raven, and there was an unmistakable tension between himself and Ariane. He glanced at Raven, and decided that she was just looking for an argument, and didn't care who with.

Liara was working on something he couldn't begin to comprehend, though she ran the data across his HUD constantly, looking for his input. Trip knew she only wanted to make him feel useful for something, and as such she began deliberately leaving anomalies in the data for him to point out. He didn't do very well.

"You have to _concentrate_," Liara told him. "It's exactly the same as all the rest of your training. Just look for things that don't seem to fit quite right."

Trip sighed. "It's all a bunch of letters and numbers to me, Liara. I don't understand enough of it to know what fits and what doesn't."

"This is unimportant, and irrelevant to the mission, making it the perfect platform for you to _learn_."

"I don't want to learn. I want to get used to being second-in-command of a Spartan team, and I want to figure out how to defuse Raven before she murders somebody, and I want to figure out what's bothering Ariane so the team is cohesive for this mission. We're screwed if somebody storms off all in a huff, and I dare say we're just as screwed if someone gets mad enough to, and doesn't."

"You're overthinking it, dearest," Liara told him cheerfully, surprising him with the use of an endearment she hadn't used for _months_.

"That's rich, coming from an AI. Honestly, all my training, it all counts for nothing in this situation. I'm above my head."

"You'll adapt. Trust yourself, Trip. You would have made a good leader, if Amelie hadn't taken charge. I have no idea why Ariane was made second-in-command of this team, and you third."

"You're just saying that," Trip said, and as he said it he knew it was true. Liara was saying what she thought he wanted to hear. If he was honest with himself, it _was_ what he wanted to hear. "The team hierarchy was established according to the natural order of authority that we automatically fell into. Amelie was always the strong leader. Ariane is a leader as well, but was content to follow Amelie most of the time. She's thriving already as a leader."

"I won't argue with that," Liara agreed. "She seems very comfortable in her new role. Snap Frost tells me my first impression is correct."

"Has he told you what the problem is? She's… distant. When I talk to her, she listens, but she's not really paying attention. And she's being incredibly paranoid. She's always tended towards it, just a little, but this… this is beyond what's normal for her."

"Frost cannot get it out of her. He says he is worried for her, and she says and does nothing to allay his concerns."

"Liara. Casual speak, please. I understand the words you use, but it's not natural to me the way it is for you."

"Sorry. And I'm sorry that all we can give you is that we share your concerns."

"Useful, Liara." Trip allowed the sarcasm into his voice to show his partner things nobody else could read in him, nobody except Ariane. His eyes were still closed, but he knew she stood with her back to him – not normal – and he could hear her talking to Jasper, which confused him. She was treating her own team like strangers, while professing a strong distaste for the Spartans who _were_, in essence, the strangers in this camp. The same Spartans she treated like long-lost family members.

Liara guessed at his thoughts. "Keep thy friends close, and thy enemies closer. She seems to have forgotten the first part of that old saying, but it rings true."

Trip opened his eyes. It did, in the set of her shoulders, in the alert way she held herself as if keeping watch on everything all at once. And, especially, in the way she kept 'accidentally' touching the pistol she always carried at her hip. That pistol was her sense of security. Without it, he knew she felt awkward and vulnerable, despite the fact that it was the least powerful of all her weapons. Trip watched her, considering the current of resentment that ran between her and Jasper. That, he surmised, was the source of the problem.

"Liara," he said.

"Yes?"

"What can you get me on Jasper? In particular, what can you get me on his dealings with Ariane? There's something."

"What, specifically, are you looking for?"

"I don't know. Anything that might cause someone as forgiving as Ariane to hold a grudge. She doesn't _hold_ grudges. Has to have been pretty bad."

"Give me a baseline, Trip. I don't know if what I find is relevant or not without a baseline."

Trip thought about it. Ariane had completely forgiven Raven within seconds when the short (for a Spartan), dark sniper had created problems with HighCom regarding Ariane's mental state, and, in particular, her paranoia. Her highly competitive streak did not breed resentment, simply determination to do better. On the other hand, he had seen Ariane be furious for hours over a single misplaced word. "I don't know what's relevant and what isn't, honestly. She's inconsistent. It could be something stupid like a poorly-worded sentence. Or, a person committing murder might be forgiven within minutes of the crime. You just never know."

"My thought on the matter is that she most likely has specific triggers. Frost will not tell me details, but he has admitted that her life before the Spartan program was… unpleasant at best. Surely that will leave a person with scars. Do you have any thoughts on possible triggers?"

"She's most paranoid about blond men," Trip realized aloud. "Used to be so bad her DI had to dye his hair to keep her from beating him up every opportunity she got. Jasper's pretty much the embodiment of that… can't call it fear, but perhaps suspicion? Maybe there's history from… before."

"Jasper was born in the same year she was. And you. If there was history that far back, her trigger would be blond children. Now that you mention it, she _does_ hold out-of-proportion grudges with blond men."

"And is more nervous around them."

"Yes, that too."

Trip muttered a short string of obscenities. "Do you think…?" he trailed off, unable to say the words. Some things were just too horrible to contemplate.

"Possibly. I would hazard a guess and say that nothing is impossible. You are _still_ over-thinking this, by the way."

"You think I should forget? You of all people know that's impossible."

Liara made an amused sound, and went back to her data. Trip grumbled under his breath and got back to his feet, making his way over to one of the dead Elites – he thought it was Johan's, and Johan was still deep in discussion with one of Midnight Team. Nothing like complicated work to take his mind off things he didn't want to think about.

He reached for his combat knife, but his hand closed around empty air. Trip's instant reaction was to flatten his palm against the place it should have been, and then glance around at the ground in search of the missing knife. He knew he had put it back in its sheath, and secured it properly, after he had used it last. It must have fallen out at some point, though _how_, he had no idea.

Trip settled himself on the ground with a sigh, found a spare armor plate, and twisted it with his hands to make what he could best describe as a miniature crowbar. Fingers alone could not find enough purchase between the armor plates on an Elite to relieve it of its armor. He jammed his crowbar into a gap and used it as a lever to open the gap wide enough to fit his fingers into it.

"Got something," Raven said triumphantly. Trip looked up and over at her to see that she was working sans helmet – in the utter dark of Eldari night, that was a shock in and of itself – and held something triumphantly in the air. That something revealed itself, a moment later, to be something Trip did not recognize, but what Liara proclaimed wisely to be precisely what they were looking for. He glanced around again, checking everybody's positions, and was unsurprised to see that Adam sat on the ground talking to himself about heart rates and blood pressure and goodness only knew what else.

"Seems you're not the only one on this team who's completely bonkers," Jasper said to Ariane, smile widening when she tensed.

"Talking to oneself is _not_ a sign of madness," she hissed through her teeth. Trip could see how badly she wanted to stalk off into the forest, and suspected he was the only one who could see the turmoil inside her as she battled to reconcile the two different sides of herself.

"Suit yourself," Jasper added in that antagonistic tone that Trip was fast beginning to dislike. "But I see paranoia, schizophrenia, perhaps a God complex, _definitely_ multiple personality disorder, and something I can't name, each in a different member of your team. Face it, Ariane, you're all nuts."

"Don't," Trip said softly, using a private comm channel, in the same moment Ariane drew herself up to her full height and somehow managed to appear taller than Jasper, who was two inches the taller of the two.

"I'm okay. I'm all right. I'm fine." Ariane was talking to herself as much as to Trip. "He's looking for a fight. Don't give it to him."

"That's right," Trip agreed. "He's just after trouble."

Raven got slowly to her feet, careful not to disturb the random plates and circuits lying in the dirt around her, and walked over to Jasper. "I should punch you out for that. Nobody insults my team and lives to tell the tale. _Nobody._"

Jasper grinned, but the smile was more a baring of teeth than any genuine expression of pleasure. "I'd like to see you try."

"You're not worth the effort. Three different helmet cams got all of that. Including comm activity. We'll throw you to the wolves and be done with you." Raven's voice was eerily calm, and it was more frightening than any amount of infuriated shouting and posturing. Trip found himself fighting an urge to step backwards.

"The _wolves_, as you call them, can't touch me," Jasper said confidently.

"Sure about that?" Sadri's voice drifted down from a tree branch above. Everybody looked up, shocked, to see Solo Agent Kilo standing on a branch that looked barely thick enough to carry a normal human's weight – let alone a Solo in full armor.

"What are you _doing?_" Trip hissed at him over a closed comm channel. "Your injuries-."

"What injuries?" Kilo flipped lightly from the branch, somersaulting partly to show off and partly to line himself up for a better landing. He hit the ground less than a foot in front of Jasper, knees bent slightly to absorb the impact, and lifted the stunned Spartan by his chestplate.

"Wait, what the hell?" Jasper spluttered.

_Rogue,_ Trip thought, unsure of where that thought had come from exactly but certain that he was right. Ariane glanced at him, a cautious but significant glance, and they stood frozen in place as Kilo squeezed pressure points in Jasper's neck, knocking him out.

"I knew I had a bad feeling about him," Ariane muttered.

"Let this be a lesson for all of you," Kilo said as he threw Jasper over his shoulder. "Nobody is immune to consequences. Lucky for the rest of Midnight Team, their leader is the only one known to have worked with rebels to directly benefit the Insurrectionist cause."

"What?" Ellen breathed, her shock quite plain in her stance. "No – he ordered us to hinder them in any way we can."

"A very effective cover," Kilo said, "and, in the end, the only thing that has saved the rest of your team."

"Guess I'm the leader now," Craig put in, shrugging. "Can't say I'm surprised. Always been something off about Jasper."

Everybody glanced at him, and when they looked back, Kilo and Jasper were gone. Ariane visibly relaxed. A blind Grunt could have seen the difference in her. "Good riddance."

"Amen, sister," Raven agreed. "Now, let's get these av-cam units sorted. I think we have enough parts here, _just_, to cover all… all eight of us."

"That's leaving me out," Ellen said, her voice as blissful as if she had just been let into the Covenant lines, invincible, alone (therefore with no allies to worry about not killing), and with a bottomless clip for her weapon of choice. That was a fantasy many a Spartan shared.

"Yes, it is," Ariane said. "You said you didn't mind."

"I don't. Adam's right, I should get this seen to somewhere sterile." Ellen gestured at her wounded leg. "I might not feel it, but if it gets infected, or doesn't heal properly, there goes my career."

Trip nearly dropped the armor plate in his hands. It was the first negative thing he had _ever_ heard Ellen say. It was also probably the most realistic thing he had ever heard her say. Ellen was uniquely optimistic. Even in the face of near-certain death, she could smile and say – and believe entirely – that she would be just fine.

"Wow, Ellen," Craig said. "How much blood did you lose?"

"Some," Ellen admitted, "but I'm okay. I can't wait to see the medics' faces when they hear my voice."

Ariane smiled at that. Ellen had the kind of babydoll voice you expected to hear from a four-year-old, so perfectly angelic it was hard to believe she was one of the UNSC's most efficient killing machines. For that reason, she never spoke over the comms, instead allowing the other members of her team to speak for her. If the order to open fire came in a little girl's voice, the Marines would die of laughter before the enemy had a chance to gun them down.

"Anybody would think there was a child hidden in all that armor," Trip said, echoing her thought.

"Woe betide anybody stupid enough to believe _that_," Ariane said, laughing aloud. "Come on, we have work to do."

The preparations could take a long time, and if the supercarrier was not at least _in danger_ by first light, this planet would become yet another desperate scramble to evacuate as many civilians as possible. Yet another bloodbath, but worse, for the losses of however many Spartans had died thus far, and however many would fall by the end of this impossible mission.

Even Ellen helped, though she once again limped badly on her injured leg, and what was left of her faceplate did not quite hide her grimace of pain. Trip swore often and spent a lot more time working for a lot less success, until Raven got sick of him and took over his share of the work as well as her own.

It was almost midnight when the last camo unit was finally installed and the last armor plate was fastened back in its place. There was no time for celebration. Sadri returned – in his green MJOLNIR, which surprised Ariane – and collected Ellen, cheerfully leading her in the direction of the forward supply base.

"Let's move," Ariane ordered, taking point.


End file.
